The Beginning
by kiernanfan
Summary: It's the end of the line for the Red Dwarf crew as they face their last day. They must learn dark secrets about their entire history, but will they live long enough to find the answers? Can even the Doctor and her friends save them as they face a horde of dangerous enemies, each one more deadly than the last?
1. The Enemy Within

_(I should point this story is in the same continuity as my previous two Doctor Who Stories, "The Time of the Mara," and "Zombies!" While both stories help provide useful context, especially the first, it's not strictly necessary to read either to enjoy this one.)_

A Jupiter Mining Ship was an ordinary sight in the late 22nd century. Three million years later however, its existence was remarkably unique, indeed virtually unprecedented. If there were humans in the deep space where it wandered, they would have been stunned that such an ancient artifact from the first millennia of the industrial era still existed. But after that they would have gotten bored, as indeed were the five crew members who had been on it for the better part of three decades.

One of those was Kristine Kochanski, first console officer, who woke up feeling miserable. There was no particular reason to feel miserable. She was in good health for someone in her fifties. She looked younger than her age, which might have flattered her if there were more women to compare herself with. Or men for that matter. The problem as she ached and groaned herself out of her bed, was that she had been doing this for decades, trapped uncounted light years from Earth millions of years from when she had been born because of a freak radiation accident. Kochanski looked at the date and time on the videoscreen. It was a Thursday, some time in October. She knew as she got more awake she would remember the actual date. It then occurred to her that the date would be meaningless if they ever returned to earth, because of time dilation moving at near (or past?) light speeds. Also, considering that since she left Earth more than 600 times all of recorded human history had passed, the Gregorian calendar probably needed to be updated. Still, all things being equal, it was probably a Thursday, at least for her.

Neither she, nor any of her crew mates, would live to see Friday.

As she got out of the shower she wondered about the many adventures the Red Dwarf team had gone through. Walking hallucinations, overly realistic virtual reality machines, bodyswaps, genetically engineered machines, alternate versions of themselves, malevolent psirens, being struck in the ventilation ducts, time wands and realistic time machines, quantum rods, megalomaniac technology updates, quantum skippers, all these and many more had plagued the four main members. Since recently rejoining the team there had been a new device which could deage her and Lister thirty years, and which could keep them in perpetual youth. There hadn't been a crazy adventure which went along with getting this device. But it meant that if there was ever a way they could all go home, they could go back to earth and their own time and live the life they should have had, instead of being stuck on this heap of junk for decades on end. Kochanski wondered a moment about the many things that she actually wanted to do. She could have a child, conceivably... Suddenly Kochanski felt very tired, as if she couldn't barely keep awake. She had to focus, to concentrate on what was really important.

Like that one of her fellow crew members was trying to kill her...

Two hours later Kochanski was sitting at a desk overseeing the removal of objects from a recent ship the crew had salvaged. They were in the first of two docking bays, allowed for the Red Dwarf "Starbug," the much smaller ship that went down to planets and moons while Red Dwarf itself stayed in orbit. "All right, the next crate is mildly radioactive. It's within safety limits. Rimmer, Kryten, you know what to do." They did indeed. Arnold Rimmer was a hard light hologram, booted from all his memories when he, along with all of the original crew with one exception, was killed in a radiation leak three million years ago. On a subconscious level, he blamed himself for the leak. He also blamed himself on a conscious level, and so frankly did everyone else, since it was based on the overwhelming evidence left by the ship's onboard computer. He was dressed in a snazzy officer's uniform, although he wasn't really an officer. And "snazzy" was open to question, since he felt compelled to change it several times over the past few decades as he reluctantly accepted that the current version just didn't work. His hard light body was invulnerable to harm. At least, that was the operative term. It could still feel pain. Rimmer was officious, pompous, mediocre, unscrupulous and self-hating in a variety of unlikeable ways. He was usually unhappy, and just today he was wincing at his appearance. His hologram was not supposed to age, but looking in the mirror, he had clearly done so.

Watching him from one of the walkways looking over both Starbug and the ship being salvaged was David "Dave" Lister. Except that only Kochanski called him that. Despite having spent the better part of three decades with each other, Rimmer and Lister still referred to each other by their surnames. Lister was the sole survivor of the radiation leak, because he had been in stasis as punishment for bringing a cat on board, and refusing to give her up. In fact, the Red Dwarf computer had decided to bring back Rimmer out of all the rest of the crew as a hologram because, as his immediate superior, he was the closest one to him. This did not mean they had been friends. Rimmer thought Lister was lazy, often disgusting, and unambitious to the point of stupidity. There was some truth in all this, but it ignored his bravery, resilience under adversity, moral courage, occasional ingenuity and loyalty to his friends. Of whom he included Rimmer, though he rarely admitted it. Near him on the walkways was Cat. He looked like an unusually stylish and well dressed man. He was that, and he was also the only apparent survivor of the race of sentient cats evolved from the one Lister brought on board. As one might expect from a sentient cat, Cat was vain, stylish, tactless, solipsistic and at times not to be trifled with. And also often bored, as he was today watching the others.

Joining Rimmer on the special platform was Kryten, the service droid, picked up early on in their adventures from a crashed pleasure cruiser. With the possible exception of Kochanski, Kryten was by far the most intelligent and responsible member of the crew. Helping carrying out many of the tasks of the servants, he had long burned out his sycophancy chips in the constant presence of Rimmer. But his politeness chips still worked well despite the intolerable stress, and they were working well today as the two climbed up the special platform. A force field would protect people outside from any radiation. Since Rimmer was a hologram and Kryten an android, they could examine objects with no risks to themselves.

As Kochanski used the machinery to pull out a large box the size of a refrigerator from the salvaged ship, Lister and the Cat watched it go by them on the walkway high above the floor while Rimmer and Kryten waited on the platform. Kryten looked at the scanning device while Rimmer bade the box come a few more meters closer. Looking above as the box held suspended by a three million year old chain Kryten was bemused. "Curious. Apparently this box contains a lot of electromagnetic devices. But the lead in the box is hampering what they are exactly. They don't seem to be any conventional device..."

But just then Kryten grabbed Rimmer and pushed both of them off the platform. (The force field kept out radiation, not themselves.) They fell twenty feet to the ground as the box abruptly crashed on the platform. Rimmer didn't realize what happened, and was angry. "Kryten you gimboid! What the smeg?!"

"Sir, the box was going to fall on us!"

"I may have a hard-light body, but falling twenty feet still hurts damn it!" But then Rimmer froze abruptly, as if his hologram form was trying to reboot. Suddenly he found himself rotating on his axis counterclockwise. Kryten was very distressed, but before he could do anything he froze up too and started singing "S! A! T! U! R! D! A! Y! S! A! T! U! R! D!" Fortunately this effect of the crashed electro-magnetic devices only lasted a few seconds. Had both men been on the platform, the devices would have erased all their systems. Just then Lister and the Cat descended from the walkways and, following standard procedure, sprayed them with decontaminating foam. Soon the two non-organic crew members were covered in it. "I'm all right, blast it!" Rimmer cried.

The Cat, remembering too many petty and officious demands Rimmer had made in the past, gleefully cried out "Better safe than sorry!" and hit him with an extra large dose of foam. Just then Kochanski spoke over the intercom. She directed the four men to a nearby video screen that showed the ruins of the box on the platform above. "That chain didn't just break. It was cut with a blaster."

So for the next couple of hours, Kryten and Kochanski investigated what happened. Meanwhile Rimmer paced frantically in the main operations room as he ranted to the shipboard computer, Holly, named after his holographic image on the computer screen, of a balding, aging man. "It's got to be Kochanski! None of these attempts on our lives arose before she returned!"

Holly rolled his hologram eyes. "Why would she want to kill her fellow crew mates? I mean aside from you."

"She's never liked Kryten, so it makes sense for him to take him out. And the Cat has no illusions about her. And as for Lister. I mean he's just deluded to think someone as rich and intelligent who he barely knows would be attracted to him. I mean he is literally the last man on earth, or anywhere, and she's still not into him."

"You are aware that of the 21 suspicious incidents over the past four months, there are at least seven that she couldn't have possibly committed..." but now Rimmer was angry at a new target. "Maybe it's Kryten. I mean he should have being retired and recommissioned years ago, literally centuries ago. Something could have gone off months ago in his programming, and he wouldn't even know it. He could be going his own oh so polite way and trying to kill us and he's thinking about the laundry all the time..."

"Look it's obviously Rimmer," said the Cat. He was talking to Lister in their quarters. "He's a smeghead. He's always been a smeghead, and now he's trying to kill us."

Lister paced, somewhat less frantically than Rimmer. "No, something's not right. Rimmer's not the kind of guy who would kill his closest mates in cold blood after spending three decades with them. I mean, yes he's a terrible coward, and he'd do anything to save his skin. But this isn't like him."

"So something snapped. And he's taking it out on us."

"Again...no. I mean, there was that incident three weeks ago when he was trapped in a room with raw plasma. It could have killed him, and he was in agony until Kryten and Holly found a way to turn off his pain sensors."

"So he's suicidal as well. And a bit masochistic."

"Do you know what I think?" Rimmer said, suddenly changing tack. "It must be the Cat. Behind that stupid, mind-meltingly shallow exterior, there's a vindictive, malevolent cat."

"Unless, it's Lister." muttered Holly _sotto voce_.

"But then it could be Lister. Nobody suspects the stupid slob whom everybody thinks is brave and has a heart of gold..."

"...for good reason." Holly again muttered to himself. Just then Kryten appeared on the intercom. "Sirs. We should all meet in the main operations room. I and Ms. Kochanski have completed our investigation." Soon all five were there and Kryten began to speak. But Rimmer interrupted.

"Let me guess. You didn't actually find the blaster that hit the cable. But you detected signs of one of those that conveniently self-destruct after firing. But you weren't able to connect it to one of us."

"Ummm, yes sir, that is the case. As I was going to say..."

"Let me guess," interrupted the Cat. "The electro-magnetic devices also disrupted the video cameras, so you couldn't actually see which one fired the shot."

"Well to be honest sir, that would be correct as well."

"So you investigated for two hours, and you are no closer to finding out who is trying to kill us." Lister pointed out, "So that leads to the question is there..."

"No," said Holly with considerable impatience. "For the 231st time, there is no one other than us aboard Red Dwarf."

"Are you sure?" Kochanski asked. "I mean there's all sorts of things that could take our place. Psirens, polymorphs, chips that control our movements, bodyswaps..."

"I'd be able to detect them if any one of them were on board." the Cat riposted.

"You weren't sure when there was a Psiren aboard Starbug. Or when a Polymorph pretended to be a Cat." Rimmer reminded him.

"Yeah. But we were able to find out the Psiren fairly quickly." Lister pointed out. "I mean this has been going on for months. If someone had taken our places we'd have noticed it by now. Remember we took psychological tests a month ago, and everything was normal."

"That's not quite what happened." Kryten gingerly winced. "Actually the psychological testing machines deliberately activated their self-destruct mechanisms."

"Exactly, everything was normal!"

Rimmer took a deep stare at Kochanski and sneered. "The fact that all of us appear normal is a good sign that the perpetrator isn't one of us. But we don't really know you, do we? You're not even the crew member Lister had a crush on three million years ago when he was thirty years younger. You're the Kochanski from an alternate universe. And you hadn't been part of the crew for nearly two decades. Who knows what phobias and charming foibles you could have developed over that time?"

Rimmer grinned an unpleasant grin as he looked around the room. The Cat had never really liked Rimmer, but it was clear that he thought this was the most logical solution. Lister spoke up. "I think we're missing something. I mean I just get this sense that there's somebody right behind me and watching me. Even when I turn around and there's nobody there. We can't rule that out."

"So you're proposing, in the clear face of logic, some heebie jeebies to protect your girlfriend?" Rimmer gibed. But just then, an alarm started to sound.


	2. The Ultimate Enemy

At that moment, it wasn't that moment. Because the woman who was walking around the console of the extremely odd spaceship was actually walking in a time machine that was traveling through all sorts of time. The woman was blond, oddly wore suspenders and appeared to be in her mid thirties. She was lively, energetic, funny and warm. Usually. But today she showed the signs of someone who had lived many centuries and who had seen more suffering and more deaths than anyone had any right to see. One could still see the slightly voluble, benevolent exterior the Thirteenth Doctor usually presented. But she was not nervous as she faced the vaguely ominous future. She was tempted to strum her fingers, but resisted it.

Just then a youngish man who was no longer so young approached her. "She's asleep." Adam Mitchell said.

"Good." The Doctor did not look directly at Adam as she turned towards the console and looking at very dials and readings. What made this more awkward for Adam was that he knew that she was not deliberately evading him. The decision was completely artless. Adam knew that of all the Doctor's many companions over her many regenerations, he had been the least favorite. This was hardly surprising, since on his second adventure with the Ninth Doctor he had selfishly allowed a computer hundreds of thousands of years in his future to be placed in his head. This breach of the temporal rules, led to the Ninth Doctor immediately leaving him back in his original time zone. And there he would have stayed had the Twelfth doctor not needed him when being chased by deadly assassins. Then the two of them and Clara Oswin faced something far more deadly, a very old and very powerful enemy called the Mara. As it happened the computer in Adam's head was very helpful in defeating him (even though Adam himself had died, if only temporarily). But the experience had not really endeared the Doctor to Adam.

That the newest Doctor had shown up with her new companion Yasmin Khan one day and asked, well actually begged, for him to come and assist them was not a good sign. That Yasmin was ordinarily a very competent and quite professional policewoman, but was now extremely distraught to the extent of being borderline hysterical was definitely not another one. It had all started innocently. The Doctor had suggested to Yasmin a Girl's Night Out, or more accurately a Girl's Day Night as she took Yasmin to visit Paris during the Belle Epoque. After a marvelous time they returned, as occasionally happened when traveling with the Doctor, six weeks in Yasmin's future. Except when they got out and looked around they found they were just about to visit Yasmin's funeral.

Adam was not confident. "So you actually have two other companions as well. Why aren't they here?"

"I don't think Graham and Ryan should be with us. I think this should be done on a strict need to know basis."

"Ah. You don't want to risk their lives. But mine is imminently dispensable."

"No, that's not it. You see..."

"No, I understand. I imagine you need the big computer in my head for a reason. And I'm happy to come along. Consider this a shot at redemption."

"I understand. But you have to understand is that this isn't about you. It's probably not about Yasmin either."

"It's all about you?"

"Unfortunately. My previous incarnation never found out who was behind the return of the Mara. All he knew was that it was extremely clever and very malevolent." The Doctor sighed. "One logical possibility was that it was the Time Lords. Another possibility was that it was the Master. Well future encounters with both remove those two as possibilities. Since the Time War things have become more complicated and convoluted. And I think there's a larger plot. I think Yasmin is bait. And I'm the one to be caught."

"If Yasmin is bait, wouldn't it be best to keep her safe until we found out what the problem is?"

"As far as I know, the TARDIS is the safest place she could be. Let me explain." The Doctor pointed to the console. "When I found about her future potential death, I was able to detect a very rare temporal energy that's not used in standard time travel machines. Moreover, as the TARDIS was studying it, that energy became harder and harder to trace."

"As if it was deliberately erasing itself?"

"My thought exactly. As it happens, the TARDIS' own instruments aren't good enough to detect where it came from or where it is going. But with the assistance of your computer, we can track it." And the Doctor pointed to a particular dial.

Adam was concerned. "We're hundreds of thousands of years in the future. Are we going to those aliens who put the computer in my head in the first place?"

"What? Oh no, no, no. See, we've already passed that period by ten thousand years. No, but if I went far, far into the future and left Yasmin behind where she was supposedly safe, she could be killed while I was trying to find what was going on."

"Whereas if we take us with her, we could be taking her right into the dragon's jaws."

"Well, yes, but I've got a couple of plans for that." The Doctor and Adam watched the dials. They were now a million years ahead of our present, and the TARDIS was accelerating. Soon they would be two millions years ahead.

"Actually, I've got a couple of ideas." Adam nervously offered.

"Oh? Go on."

"Well Clara told me before your previous incarnation dropped me off, that there was a time when everyone thought you were dead, but it was actually a kind of robot, a Tesseract or something..."

"A Teselecta. And it's actually a sophisticated spaceship that looks like an android. And I thought of that. But having become aware of their existence, they're now very easy for me to detect. That wasn't in Yasmin's coffin. Everything suggests the corpse was actually Yasmin."

"Oh. Well the second thing deals with the enemy. Everything suggests our enemy is very clever and dangerous, and it can't be anyone who ordinarily who falls into those categories. So..." And Adam paused.

"Yes?"

"Well, wouldn't it be most likely that our enemy was you? Or a future version of you?"

"I've considered that possibility." the Doctor replied. "It's unlikely." (Adam winced. He was looking something more definite than "unlikely.") "For a start, the Mara came too close to killing me. Also, the Mara said he knew who was behind his return. And while not an expert in time travel, he knew that if my future self had been the one who liberated him, and that he killed me, then he would be causing his own destruction."

"Ah..."

"There's another thing. I think our enemy goes back some way. Quite some way. For some time I thought I was destined to die on Trenzalore. But instead I got a whole new regeneration life cycle. How that happened involved a complex series of temporal and causal loops involving me, River Song and the time lords. Which makes it unlikely that it was someone from my future who was manipulating things."

"Well I'm not an expert in time travel..."

"There's another thing."

"Oh?"

"On Trenzalore I got thirteen new lives. I'm now on my second one. So conceivably somebody in my 13th new life could be attacking me. Except I don't believe I have that much time. There isn't going to be a 24th Doctor, or a 25th Doctor depending on how you count them. I'm not sure how many lives I have left. But I have this..._intuition_ that I'm running out of time. Not necessarily this life, but probably the next one, maybe the one after." The Doctor paused and looked at the dials again. "We're past three million years. We've started to slow down."

"But you've seen future versions of yourself."

"Yes. There was apparently a version, who disguised himself as a high Time Lord judicial official-the Valeyard. But I think he was part of a larger conspiracy. The key thing was that Rassilon found him and assassinated him in front of my eyes during the Time War."

"What sort of conspiracy?"

"Oh, there were all sorts of them before and during the Time War. No, I think we're dealing with something much more sinister, and older." But just then Yasmin emerged from her room.

"How are you?" the Doctor asked, trying to be bright and cheerful.

"Better. But still really depressed."

"I understand. But I've dealt with rebooted universes, resurrecting the Time Lords and dealing with fixed points in time."

Adam was skeptical. "Weren't you so cocky after you saved three people from certain death that one of them killed herself just to put you in your place?"

"Well yes, there was that. But now I'm much more skeptical and much more careful and much much much more humble."

"Well it's all the muchs that make it extra convincing."

"Look, Yasmin, I've got something special for you. Just stay put." And the Doctor took out her sonic screwdriver and whirled it around here for a few seconds. "Ta-da!"

"What have you done?" Yasmin wondered.

"I've placed a force field around you! It should protect you from stray bullets and phaser shots. Actually from most things actually."

"Then why haven't you always done so?" Adam asked. Yasmin went over to look at the console, and found that she couldn't touch it.

"Well there's that." The Doctor replied. "Yasmin, if you want to touch something, you're going to have to really concentrate to briefly let the field down. Also, static electricity really builds up, so you have to be careful."

"Ow!"

"Exactly! Like that! Also, I've thought up one special thing, which I'm not going to tell you." The Doctor looked more closely at the console. "We've stopped. We're more than three million years in the future. Oh! It's a Thursday!"

"Why would that temporal energy end up here?" Adam asked. But then he winced in pain. The Doctor snapped her fingers and the computer inside him revealed itself. "Let me see?" And she probed it with her sonic screwdriver. "Oh, this is not good. There's the tiniest little circuit in the computer and it just burned out."

"That can't be a coincidence."

"No," the Doctor agreed as she snapped her fingers and closed the computer. "Hmmm. There is something...a bit odd."

"What do you mean?" Yasmin inquired.

"Well, there's all sort of strange temporal...stuff. They're not actually turning into an anomaly yet, but they could in the future if we let it."

"What sort of anomalies?'

"I'm not sure. They could be the kind that allow you to save your life, or the kind that could destroy the universe that if we ignore them. Let's see if we can look a little closer." She touched a few buttons and Holly's distress signal from Red Dwarf appeared: "_This an SOS distress call from the mining ship Red Dwarf. The crew are dead, killed by a radiation leak. The only survivors were Dave Lister who was in suspended animation at the time of the disaster and his pregnant cat who was safely sealed in the hold. Revived three million years later, Lister's only companions are a lifeform who evolved from his cat and Arnold Rimmer, a hologram simulation of one of the dead crew."__T_

"Hmmm, this is been broadcasting for some time. Looks like for several decades, plus a couple of centuries gap, as if they were all in deep sleep." The Doctor projected several versions of the warning, with Kryten appearing as well as Holly's female form. The three watched the Red Dwarf members age over time. "This appears to be the most recent one." They saw a projection as Holly, clearly bored, once more gave the distress call in front of the rest of the crew. Kochanski was one of the crew, hardly surprising since it was only a few days old.

"Something's occurred to me," she said. "You've been broadcasting this signal for basically thirty years."

"Yeah, more or less." Lister agreed.

"And for all that time, you've been running into GELFs, psychotic androids, and all sorts of weird and unpleasant creatures."

"Uh, yeah."

"Well might it not be a good idea to be constantly messaging the entire universe that we have a well stocked spaceship who have less than a half a dozen people to defend it?"

There was an awkward silence among the crew. "Who are these schmucks?" Adam asked out loud.

"Somebody we need to rescue!" the Doctor replied. "Interesting, the three humans were originally less than a couple of centuries from our time." She looked a little more closely at the scanner. "Now this is also odd. The Jupiter Mining Corporation went bankrupt a few decades after the radiation leak the distress call mentions. But now someone is using their frequency and code to signal _to _Red Dwarf."


	3. The Subtle Enemy

The crew were all in Starbug, preparing to move out. "So Holly, any idea of where's this signal is coming from?" Lister asked.

"It's using our frequencies and codes, so it must be someone from the Jupiter Mining Corporation. That's what's activating the alarm system. It's highest priority. We have to answer it."

"Except there hasn't been a Jupiter Mining Corporation for three million years.' Rimmer pointed out. Starbug was moving up, as the docking bay doors opened.

"Who's the signal coming from?" Kochanski asked.

"Ah. It's very high priority, but it's encoded and I can't quite figure it out. It's clearly a distress situation. With a little more time I can figure out who it's from. I'm sending you the coordinates from where it's from."

"Coordinates received." Kryten confirmed. "It appears to be from some sort of ship. Actually it appears to be some sort of warship. We should be able to get visuals in about fifteen minutes."

"Hey! Is everybody stupid?" the Cat asked.

"I don't think 'everybody' means what you think it does in that sentence." Kochanski replied.

"Look, there was the time when the nanobots took over Red Dwarf. And they resurrected the whole crew, including Rimmer. And then there was this virus or weapon or whatever and it started breaking down the entire ship so the entire crew fled. And we haven't heard anything from them in twenty years. So it must be one of them."

"Sir, as you undoubtedly remember, the nanobots couldn't actually resurrect the entire crew after having been dead for millions of years. Surely you remember that after a few months the crew members started to dissolve?"

"Really?"

"Oh course. And when the nanobots realized this, they wanted to break us down as well."

"Man, that was the worst seventeen hours of my life." Lister remembered. He shivered in pure horror.

"That does not ring a bell at all." the Cat replied.

"Well you must remember sir, that the nanobot Rimmer was only saved by merging with our Hologram Rimmer, who fortuitously reappeared then."

"No, that is not coming back to me."

"You don't remember it all? But it was my idea that managed to save us and stop the nanobots." Rimmer reminded him. "You even said that you were eternally grateful to me."

"Nah. I'm not recalling it. I remember leaving the ship with all of you except Rimmer, and the next thing was that time a despair squid made all of us except Kochanski think we were trapped in a version of 'Blade Runner.'"

"But those events were a decade apart!" Lister reminded him.

"Yeah, well, that was a really boring decade. I mean nothing happened _at all._"

About twenty minutes later, Kochanski, Lister and Cat were still arguing the matter as they entered the warship. Rimmer and Kryten were back on Starbug overseeing things. "Look," Kochanski offered, "you do remember the elaborate dance sequence, across a background of yellow and vanilla, where you danced with psychotic GELFs while twirling umbrellas?"

"No, I'd think I'd remember that."

"Excuse me, sirs and Ma'am." Kryten interrupted. "I've been able to find out what ship we just entered. It's a simulant ship."

"What kind?" Lister asked nervously.

"Well do you know the most vicious and sadistic simulants we've ever encountered? This is much worse." The three approached an imposing door, and Kochanski opened it. The large room they entered showed a vista of gruesome carnage that amply vindicated Kryten's opinion. There was a plethora of simulant corpses, many half dissolved, others copiously bleeding.

Listen gulped. "Well, the good news is that they're all dead."

"Actually sir, our sensors here in Starbug can't be sure whether that is actually the case or not. They're a lot in this warship that blocks us from detecting them..."

"Wonderful," Kochanski muttered.

"...nor is that the worst of it, sir."

"Oh?"

"From what I can gather from what I can get from the computer systems, these simulants are not simply especially vicious and sadistic. Apparently for centuries, conceivably millennia, they have been the most successful assassins in human history. Their cunning and guile have no known precedents. And their weaponry, sir, is especially effective. Not simply could it kill you instantly, but they are heavily effective against androids. And as for hard light holograms, well sirs and ma'am, they have absolutely no problem with them. Why they can sneak and follow anyone with no problems at all. Why they make you think you're secure, but they could be right behind you all this time. They are perfect at evading your peripheral vision. Why you might turn around and they could easily evade you. Just like that! You could turn around again, and they'd be gone! Just like that! And if you're thinking you're being watched, well you could try to take evasive action. But no matter how clever and sharp you are, they could have a special laser which can rip through hard-light holograms and..." And then there was an alarming noise on Kryten's end.

"Kryten? Kryten?!" Lister yelled.

"It's nothing sir. Mr. Rimmer just fainted."

"Anyway," interrupted the Cat, "our sensors are directing us to the one human from where the signal is coming from. It's one hundred meters straight ahead."

"OK. Let's get this person and get out. Let's not waste any more time." Lister declared. And the three went off, leaving behind an auditorium full of corpses. And one simulant playing possum, who, seeing them pass by, slowly opened his eyes and started to get up.

* * *

In another section of the warship, the TARDIS materialized. The Doctor opened the door and gingerly stepped out. "All right, from what I know of human history, this ship is controlled by extremely deadly simulants. So be careful. Actually Yasmin, perhaps you should best stay inside. Adam, come with me."

Both obeyed, with some reluctance. "Ah! There's a computer terminal. We can find out what happened." The Doctor snapped her fingers and Adam's computer appeared again. Quickly using her screwdriver to access it, she was quickly able to get into the simulants' computer system.

"Oh. This is odd."

"Please stop saying that." Adam whimpered.

"It says the simulants recently captured a human, and they're holding him-it is a him-in a containment chamber. But they didn't hold him very long. This all happened a few hours ago when they were attacked. And this is the strange thing. Despite all their considerable technology, they don't-make that didn't-have any idea who or what it was that attacked them. They were completely unable to describe their attackers."

"Lovely."

"Well speaking for myself," Yasmin spoke via an intercom back in the TARDIS, "given both the deadly quasi-robots and the unknown assailants who slaughtered them without a sweat, shouldn't we be leaving?"

"Hold on," replied the Doctor. "Let's see if we can find out more." She quickly searched through the terminal. "Oho! First off, the distress signal is being sent by somebody from the Jupiter Mining Corporation. It wasn't a trap set by the simulants. Now let's see who actually sent it. Aha! That's very interesting!"

Meanwhile Holly and the crew back in Starbug had noticed the Doctor's presence. "Heads up." Rimmer alerted. "We've just noted some other life forms in the warship. They're in another section."

"Are they simulants?" Kochanski asked.

"No." Kryten replied. "Holly says there's a 95% chance that they're not. It's not quite clear what they are. They're apparently human, but for some reason the sensors can't be sure whether there's two or three of them."

"Something's materialized along with them." Rimmer interjected. "It may be their space vessel, but we can't get a good look at it. They appear to be talking to someone."

"Maybe that's the third life form." the Cat suggested.

"OK, I think I see the captive." Lister noted. "There's this tube right ahead." And in a few seconds there was indeed. It was a large vertical tube, filled with a greenish florescent liquid. There was a hydra of potential wires and tubes that connected it to the elaborate and intimidating warship structure. Inside floated a young man in his mid-twenties. He was thin, dressed in a suit and tie, with slightly long dark hair. Lister, Kochanski and the Cat were all stunned.

"He's me." Lister gasped.

Just then Holly piped in. "I've finally decoded whom the distress signal came from. It's from one of our crew members. The name is...David Lister. Funny old universe innit?"

"Can you figure a way to get him...well me out?"

"Actually, I've had enough experience with simulant ships to work out the controls," said Kochanski, and she started pressing several buttons at once. There was a stark gasp from the aging machinery as the vertical tube started to rise. The green fluid started to drain from the tube with several alarming gulps. Not all the pipes seemed to work properly and Lister and the Cat had to avoid splashes of the liquid, which had an unpleasant stench. As the tube and fluid vanished the young man was briefly suspended by a residual electro-magnetic effect. Then he collapsed, and fell down, to be grabbed by Lister.

He did not appear to be breathing. Lister slapped the young man whom Holly had identified as his younger self, and whom we will refer to as "David" so as not to confuse the two. "Wake up! Wake up! Are you all right?" David gasped, and choked out and spat out some of the green fluid. "Can't...don't understand...what...what…what?"

"Be calm. Everything's going to be all right."

Just then Rimmer interrupted. "Well, actually...apparently when Kochanski opened the tube, she started the warship's self-destruct system. So if you don't want you and your past self vaporized, I suggest the both of you get back pretty damn quickly."

Just then a booming voice from the warship's own systems verified Rimmer's diagnosis. It immediately became apparent that David was in no condition to walk. So Lister and Kochanski both took an arm and started to race back to Starbug, with the Cat serving on point to make sure that there weren't any Simulant surprises. Meanwhile in the other section of the Warship the Doctor and Adam also heard the news of the ship's imminent demise. "Time for us to be going?" Adam fretted.

"Hold on, I've got visuals of the rest of the ship." The Doctor quickly reviewed footage of the last few minutes. She saw the three liberate David from the tube, saw Lister slap David awake, and then saw them all scuttle back to Starbug.

"We have to get back to Red Dwarf! The crew have just walked back into a trap!" She raced past Adam, who quickly followed, stopping only briefly to pick up one of the many firearms lying around. Meanwhile Rimmer was outside Starbug impatiently badgering the four to get here faster. "Hurry up! Hurry up! We only have a few minutes."

"A few minutes will be sufficient time." Kochanski accurately replied. The four were soon on board with Rimmer following. The Cat had been very careful about making sure they had not been followed. Unfortunately, Rimmer had not been so cautious while waiting around, and the one simulant survivor was able to slip aboard Starbug...

The TARDIS had dematerialized and the Doctor was looking at the controls while Yasmin and Adam watched. "Hmm. I have to make a quick decision. I can try to materialize on board Starbug and immediately tell the crew of the danger. But since Starbug is also moving, that would involve more agility than the TARDIS can probably manage. So I think we'll materialize aboard Red Dwarf and then tell them."

"Couldn't we send them a message to Starbug right now?" Yasmin now. But just then the TARDIS was shook by the warship's explosion.

"No, the explosion will disrupt my ability to do that. I think we can wait until Starbug actually docks. I certainly hope so." And the Doctor set the coordinates.

Meanwhile the crew of Red Dwarf were looking at a very confused David. "He's paler than you." Rimmer remarked.

"Rimmer, he was in one of those weird tubes for who knows how long. Of course he's paler." Lister responded.

"He's certainly better dressed than you. And thinner. And a little taller?"

"If he's you in the past, why don't you remember this happening to you?" the Cat wondered.

"To be fair, Lister has taken so much alcohol and drugs his ability to remember anything is seriously open to question." Rimmer snarked.

"Sirs, if I may interject," Kryten pointed out, "we have undergone no shortage of temporal anomalies in our years on Red Dwarf. Need I remind you of the time Mr. Lister invented tension paper, or when the Inquisitor actually killed three of us, or when we were all killed when our future selves blew up Starbug. Not to mention the time when we convinced John F. Kennedy to be the second gunman in his own assassination..."

"Wait, you did what?' Kochanski cried. She approached David more closely and softly caressed his face. "Maybe he's a clone."

"I'm not a clone!" David snapped. "I was minding my own business one evening eight days after my twenty-third birthday. I was wearing this monkey suit for a job interview, and then I went to a show when someone knocked me out and the next thing I knew I was in that tube. Or something like that. Look there's a playbill from the show." And David pulled it out from one of the waistcoat pockets.

Lister looked at it. "That sounds like something I would do. Oh! There's a curry stain!" He smelled it more closely. "Oh yeah, I _definitely _remember that place."

Holly interrupted. "I've just completed a genetic scan. Our guest is clearly the Lister from the past."

Rimmer drew the other four crew members aside. "All right. Somebody has to tell him that he's millions of years in the future with no known way of going back in time. Also, one of us is trying to kill the others and we don't know which one it is." The five all eyed each other. "Dibs on Listie!" Rimmer shouted, pointing at Lister, joined by the Cat and Kochanski.

Shortly thereafter Starbug landed in the main docking port, and the six quickly got out. Kochanski stopped to look at David.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"There's something interesting about you. I mean, I don't regularly judge people by their faces. But there's something strong about you. Maybe it's your eyes. I mean you're still pretty weak, but I can see there's something about you."

"My ears are burning..." Lister added.

"Don't fish for compliments, it's in poor taste," Kochanski snapped. She took a closer look at David and peered into his eyes. "There's something more. A bit of cunning? Something...adamantine..."

"GET DOWN!" David yelled, and leaped on Kochanski so that they both fell to the ground. As such it was Rimmer who got the simulant's first shot right in the chest.

"OW! That hurts!"

"A hard-light hologram? That will be easy to fix," the simulant noted smugly. He quickly pushed a button on his weapon and a more powerful blast of energy hit Rimmer.

Just then Holly interrupted. "Excuse me everyone. I've detected a stranger aboard Starbug. It could be a simulant!"

"Thanks a smegging lot Holly!" Rimmer yelled back as he got hit by another blast. The attacks were more (excruciatingly) painful than damaging. For the moment.

"All our weapons are back on Starbug!" Lister shouted. "We've got to hit him with anything we can!" And so Lister and Kryten started throwing anything they could find in the docking bay. Spray-painters, chains, axles, tire irons, wrenches, bottles of glue, empty beer cans, one of Rimmer's Morris dancing records, a bottle of varnish were all tossed desperately at the simulant, all to little effect. Lister also threw a box of nails at the simulant, and by sheer chance one entered the barrel of his weapon just as he was firing. The energy discharge severely shocked him and knocked him to his feet.

"Yeah! Score one again for dumb luck!" Lister gloated.

The simulant got to his feet again. "I'm still strong enough and more than clever enough to take all you space trash out."

"But you're not strong enough to take _me_ out!" the Cat avowed, who had used Lister's distraction to get two weapons. The other crew members all hit the floor as the two opponents faced off, the Cat moving with unequaled grace and skill against the wounded simulant's malevolent ultra-competence. As they lethally tangled with each other a few seconds lasted like...slightly more seconds to the terrified others.

When the smoke cleared, the Cat was unharmed. In fact he looked even more stylish and attractive than he did before the shooting started. But the simulant was now mortally wounded, his weapons destroyed.

Carefully eyeing him, the Cat approached him, followed by Kryten and Lister.

"Who destroyed your fellow simulants?" Kryten asked.

The simulant gasped, choking on his own blood. "You..." And then he died.


	4. The First Enemy

As it happened, the TARDIS had just materialized in the second docking bay a few seconds earlier and the Doctor chose this exact moment to make herself known in the first one. "Hello!" the Doctor announced herself cheerfully, followed by Yasmin and Adam. "I actually have..."

"Get them!" Rimmer yelled.

The Cat opened fire, and the two quickly dashed back into the first docking bay. Since it took just a little time for Lister, Rimmer and Kryten to get some weapons, while Kochanski helped David to his feet, the Doctor and her companions had enough time to dash into one of Red Dwarf's innumerable corridors. "All right. We're going to break up!" she announced.

"Are we?" Adam asked with alarm.

"Look, I'm going to try to argue some sense with them...and do something else. You try to hide yourself and keep safe." The Doctor dashed off, and Adam and Yasmin sprinted away in the opposite direction. After a few hundred meters, the two came to a turning point. "Here! Take this!" Adam told Yasmin.

"What is it?"

"It's a gun I took from the warship."

"The Doctor doesn't believe in guns."

"Well bullets and energy blasts don't care about that. Look you're facing certain death. Until the Doctor finds some clever way of changing that, it's better to do so armed." Adam took a deep breath. "Look. You don't _have_ to take it."

Yasmin reluctantly accepted it, which was made more awkward because the force field around it made it difficult for her to grab it. After fumbling with it, she put it behind her, stuffed in her pants. The two quickly raced off in differing directions. After running about a hundred meters, Adam turned his head to hear something...only to run smack dab into Kryten, falling unconscious on the floor.

Meanwhile Kochanski was taking David to the main operations room. "Kryten? Lister? Holly? Is anyone reading me?" she asked.

"Rimmer here. We've got the first woman with a gas bomb. And Kryten just found the man. We haven't seen the other, darker, woman."

Kochanski nodded nervously. "Holly? Is there anybody in the operations room?"

"There's shouldn't be." Nevertheless Kochanski bade David to stay in the distance, while she opened the door and checked the room. Satisfied that it was safe, she motioned David to come in. Before he did so, he picked up a weapon that someone had left there for him in the corridor.

* * *

When Adam awoke, he realized he was being dragged along with the Doctor down a corridor by Lister and the Cat. He still hadn't achieved his bearings when the two abruptly stopped. The Cat quickly searched Adam, while Lister searched the Doctor. Satisfied, they opened a door, and thrust the two time travelers into what they now realized was a prison cell. The Doctor had now recovered. "Oh good, it's you." she said to Lister. "You have to listen to me."

"Actually I don't. First, we're going to find your accomplice. Then we'll talk to you when we feel good and ready." And the cell door shut.

Adam was understandably depressed. "Well we're stuck in a cell with no way of getting out." The Doctor motioned how to be quiet, as she pointed to something on the ceiling above them. She then motioned him to cover his mouth.

"Interesting," she said. "This cell shouldn't ordinarily have cameras. But there are clearly highly sophisticated visual devices watching us from above. I suspect the crew doesn't know about them."

"I don't see how that helps us...what a minute! I'm no longer speaking English!"

"No, we're speaking Trakenian, using the TARDIS' time circuits so that the people who are watching us can't understand us. Or so I hope. Only three people in the entire universe should be able to speak it."

"Well they're going to catch Yasmin."

"Actually, before they got me, I managed to inject a computer virus so that their sensors can't detect her. And I have an audio link with her." The Doctor brought what appeared to be a wrist-watch on her arm to her mouth. "Are you all right Yasmin?"

"For the moment." she replied. "Do you want me to find a way of getting you out?"

"No need." And the Doctor took out her sonic screwdriver.

"How did that happen?" a baffled Adam wondered. "That pudgy guy searched you before he put you in prison."

"Yes, and I had enough presence of mind to put it in his pocket and take it out again after he searched me. Now what's a good angle to make sure they can't see me?" Quickly finding one, she started using her screwdriver.

The work was by no means instantaneous. "Shouldn't this be a little quicker?" an antsy Adam wondered.

"Two things. First, someone has upgraded the lock on this thing, so it's taking a little longer. Second, it would be good if our leaving didn't immediately alert whoever is watching us. So it should take about ten minutes. Yasmin, I'll need you to try to warn the crew before hand. I mean it might be better for you to try and hide."

"No, I'm not going to spend what may be my last minutes as a coward. But you haven't actually told me what the danger is."

"Ah yes. Alright, I'll tell you." A thought occurred to the Doctor. "Of course, if it turns out the Master is behind all this, I may have just sealed our death warrants."

A minute later, Yasmin went off on her rescue mission. There were some problems. There was still trouble turning off the force field long enough to open doors. And also the static electricity still built up and shocked her. And sometime the force field was so awkward, she stumbled helplessly. Looking at herself in a passing reflection, Yasmin was startled to find herself with her worst hair day ever as the static buildup had completely frazzled it. As she awkwardly tried to smooth it, with the force field getting in the way, she muttered to herself. "I could die today. I hope it isn't from embarrassment."

Meanwhile back in the main operations room, Rimmer and Kryten had joined David and Kochanski. Just then Holly spoke up on the screen. "I think I've found the intruder's spaceship." And he posted an image of the TARDIS in the second docking bay.

Rimmer was surprised and skeptical. "That can't be their ship. It looks like an old-fashioned telephone booth."

Kochanski agreed. "Yeah, it looks two centuries old...I mean two centuries before we all found ourselves millions of years in the future."

"How could they all fit in it?"

"I wouldn't rule it out." David opined. "She may look silly, but I think the Doctor is more dangerous than she lets on."

"Excuse me, the who?" Kochanski asked.

"The Doctor. That's the name the older woman gave when she introduced herself."

"Umm, no I don't think she did." Kryten pointed out.

"Really? Then perhaps I heard it later."

"Holly? Any luck on finding the third intruder?"

"No. You're not going to like this..." Holly replied.

"Oh, I don't know," Rimmer replied. "Considering the countless times your incompetence has put us in mortal peril, maybe this is the day we won't mind."

"Not only did she abruptly vanish from our screens, but I was clearly getting _four _life signs, even though we've only seen three people."

"Oh, terrific. I need a drink." And Rimmer went to get a holographic equivalent of really bad whiskey. Just then Lister and the Cat returned. "Any luck finding the third intruder?" Lister asked.

"Of course not." Rimmer replied as he poured something evil smelling.

"Well the good news is that we're all here." David announced. He smiled and looked at Lister. "Goodbye father." And had not Rimmer abruptly changed his mind and walked right in the line of fire to get something else to drink, David would have shot Lister dead right there and then.

"OW! That hurts! That still hurts!" Rimmer yelled, as he dropped the cup he was holding. David aimed again at Lister who ducked behind Rimmer. David hit Rimmer a couple of times trying to hit Lister, while also making quick covering fire shots at the others so they couldn't interfere.

"What's going on?" came a voice from what the others realized was David's communications device. The voice was female. It was dignified, restrained, certainly not young, and clear upper class English in tone and diction.

"They're using Rimmer as a literal human shield." David replied.

"Hold on. I'm going to send an upgrade on your weapon." The power bars on David's weapon gave an encouraging purr, and then the next blast knocked Rimmer right over Lister, into the air and crashing into the wall behind him.

"We have guns!" the Cat pointed out, as he, Lister and Kryten all aimed at David.

With a theatrical and disheartingly efficient twirl, David fired three shots in rapid succession that rendered their weapons useless. He smugly pretended to blow smoke off the barrel of his weapon. The others quickly dashed for cover, and were lucky to be only stunned by David's next burst of fire. David went over to the dazed crew, and yanked Kochanski back up on her feet.

"Hello mother...I'm not going to hurt you...much." David took out a syringe and jabbed into just above the collar of her shirt. Blood quickly filled it, and David put into a suit pocket. "I suppose I should keep you alive to make sure this sample works." He then slapped her down to the floor. "But there's really no need to keep you alive, Father." And he aimed again at a stunned and barely conscious Lister.

But this time the killing stroke was interrupted when Yasmin leaped and intercepted the shot with her force field.

"Who the bloody smeg are you?!" And David fired another two shots at her, which the force field saved her from.

The voice interrupted again. "It must be one of the Doctor's companions."

"Terrific. Now she's the one blocking Lister." And David fired another useless shot.

"Hold on. I'm examining her force field. I think I can adjust it." And then Yasmin found herself frozen in place. Lister was now more or less awake...and facing the barrel of David's weapon.

"Well, you know what they say, Father. Third time's the charm."

But nothing happened when he pulled the trigger. He quickly did so again a couple of times, to no better effect. "What the hell?"

"Oh, that would be me!" said the Doctor entering with her sonic screwdriver. Realizing David's weapon was useless, Lister quickly slugged him. Adam reached over to David's prostrate form and quickly searched him. Not realizing that David had taken a syringe full of blood, he didn't find it in his special hiding place. But Kryten pointed out the communications device. Adam took it off, but then there was an alarming noise as it started to burn.

"It's disintegrating!" the Doctor noted, and with a handkerchief quickly grabbed the remains before they disintegrated altogether. Then with another use of her sonic screwdriver she adjusted Yasmin's force field so she could move, while another zap at the computers countered the virus she had introduced so Holly couldn't detect her.


	5. The Second Enemy

A few minutes later, David was locked in a nearby room, which the crew could watch from the operations room. Yasmin had introduced herself, the Doctor and Adam and explained that they were time travelers who had found Red Dwarf's distress signal. The Doctor had realized that David was not Lister's past self and was about to warm them.

"But how did you know the second Mr. Lister was an imposter?" Kryten asked.

"Very simple." the Doctor explained. She picked up a pen. "Now imagine that a time traveler entered this room thirty minutes from now and took up this pen. Then she came back to this minute and touched 30 minutes from now pen with present pen. There would be a brief discharge of energy, like a spark. It's called the Blinovitch Limitation Effect. Now the thing about the Effect is that while the effect would be minor for the two pens, the effect increases exponentially with the mass of the objects and the time gap between them. So when Lister touched his supposedly past self, the effect should have been enough to blow up the Warship. Since nothing happened, that past self was clearly an imposter."

"Well that's another brilliant mistake you made, Holly," Rimmer muttered crossly. "You said our friendly assassin was Lister."

"He is Lister!" Holly protested. "The genetic profile matches perfectly."

"I assure you he isn't." the Doctor interjected.

"He is. He is clearly the son of Dave and Kochanski."

"Excuse me," Adam wondered. "You're saying this guy who tried to kill you is both you and your son?"

"Oh yeah," replied Lister. "It's actually a funny story."

"Try impossible." Yasmin said.

"No, I know it's weird. But it all makes sense. I mean me name's Lister, but that's actually the name of the people who adapted me. You see I was found in a box in a pool room. Have you heard the term 'Ouroboros'?"

"The Snake that swallows its own tail? Of course." the Doctor answered.

"Well, when actually the box had that on the side, though I only knew of a few letters. Anyway when Kochanski appeared on Red Dwarf millions years of later, she wanted a sperm sample so she could have a test tube baby. And I gave her one. But then I realized that the letters was actually a reference to the Ouroboros symbol, and that the test tube baby was actually going to be me. So eighteen months later, I used a time machine to put me in the Ouroboros box where I was found."

Adam, Yamsin and the Doctor all stared at the Red Dwarf in astonishment. The Doctor spoke first. "Excuse me, but are you all very stupid?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"No, no, I'm sorry. I promised myself that would be one aspect of the old me that I would stop and I shouldn't say it. So I'm very sorry. Exceptionally so. But you do realize that is just stunningly stupid?"

"Excuse me again?" Now Lister was getting angry.

"Perhaps I could explain," Yasmin interceded. "Look, you've spent decades in deep space, millions of years after all your friends and family died. Then you found a time machine that could take you anyplace and anywhen."

"Yeah. So what?"

"Why didn't you use the time machine to take you home?"

The five members of Red Dwarf looked at each other, as well as Holly. Slowly, something incredible hit them as they realized the full impact of what Yasmin said.

Then the Doctor realized something more. "Oh, no, you're not stupid at all. This was all planned. Somebody wanted to find a time machine, and they sent you into the far future to find it. And when they got what they needed, they sent your son as an assassin to kill you to tie up any loose ends."

"They sent Rimmer and Dave into the far future? These two twits?" Kochanski objected. "No offense Dave."

Kryten had another objection. "David the assassin was born two decades ago. Why try to kill us now?"

"Very good questions!" the Doctor replied. "I should add being your own father is genetically and causally impossible. First off, your son would have genetic material from Kochanski, which would make him different from you."

The Cat pondered this. "But if Lister was always his own father and the son of his mother, wouldn't..."

"No, that's not how it works."

"Can you be your own grandfather...or your great grandfather?" Kochanski wondered.

"Eww..." Adam noted.

"No." the Doctor answered. "The mathematics are too complicated to explain just this minute. But here's the common sense explanation: basically each multicelluar organism is a unique combination of untold trillions of possible genetic combinations. Now what is the probability that a descendant would, through a generation or two or three of sexual combination would end up with the exact same genetic profile?"

"So just to be clear, Lister isn't actually my son?" Kochanski asked. "Good to know."

"Anyway we need to concentrate on the conspiracy to kill you all. We need a division of labor. First, I need to know the entire history of Red Dwarf. Kryten, is there another computer room nearby?"

"Actually there's a backup room down the hall ma'am."

"All right, you and Adam come with me. The rest of you see if you can get anything from the assassin and find out who he was communicating with."

The three of them went to the other room. Then abruptly Kochanski leaped up. "I remember hearing the voice before!"

"So do I!" Rimmer recalled.

"Great! Who is it?" the Cat wondered.

"Well...I don't _exactly _remember who it was." Kochanski admitted. "But I definitely heard the voice before. Let's see if I can salvage anything from David's communication device."

* * *

As Kochanski tried to find who David had been talking to, elsewhere on the ship, deep inside its bowels, carefully hidden from easy observation, her target was having a conversation.

"You failed!" said a man's voice. It was somewhat elderly, perhaps 10 years older than Rimmer. "Now they'll find us."

"They'll find _me_!'" David's conversant and superior said. "But they won't be able to _get _to me before it's too late."

"We should attack them, before they find anything new."

"No, David is carefully tending and testing the blood sample in the syringe. Once we've confirmed its importance we can send it and David back in time. Then we can move. I assure you we will achieve complete victory."

"You said David would have a 98% chance of killing Lister!"

"True, the Doctor and her companions disrupt my forecasting abilities. But the longer they stay here, the more quickly their effect wears off."

"What good are you if you're not completely accurate!?"

"Superior intelligence for one thing. I might remind you that your plan to kill the crew was dramatically flawed. 21 unsuccessful attempts by itself hardly shows excessive competence on your part."

"I've been waiting here for decades! We had the time machine, but then we had to wait for the real Rimmer. Then he came back and we had to wait to get Kochanski back. I was given half a trillion credits, but instead of enjoying it, I've been stuck here!"

"I might remind you that not only was your plan to kill off the crew completely unsuccessful in its own terms, but had it succeeded it would have had the most appalling consequences..."

"...yes, yes, I realize that."

"You did not realize it when I objected at the time, and you turned me off. But now your confusion has been settled and our superiors have given _me _full authority. Don't worry, you will soon have all the money you've ever wanted...captain."

* * *

In the second room, Kryten and Holly were preparing a complete history of the Red Dwarf logs, while Adam was using the computer in his head to help arrange the download for the Doctor. "Are you sure this is a good idea ma'am?"

"Oh, I faced worse!" Kryten winced, but pushed the button. The Doctor gasped as thirty years of Red Dwarf adventures were downloaded into her brain. She staggered a bit, then one leg alarmingly slipped.

"Are you all right ma'am?!"

The Doctor recovered her balance, twirled counter-clockwise twice, then leapt in the air. "Whoosh!" She then landed. "All right, all right, just a few more seconds." She then took two deep breaths. "All right! Now there's something missing, something very important, something very obvious. And there's also the problem of Kochanski! If I could just grasp it...but there's the first thing first! Kryten, why didn't you tell me about the 21 attempts on all your lives over the past six months?!"

Kryten was, despite his android face, very sheepfaced. "Well ma'am, it has been a very busy day."

"Adam! Search for every reference before the Red Dwarf disaster where Lister refers to his parents and to any combination of 'Ouroboros.' Kryten! On another screen show the last few minutes of Red Dwarf before the original radiation leak and put it on a loop! Holly, provide a summary of the 21 attempts on the crew's lives." They did so and the Doctor quickly viewed the materials as fast as she could.

"Ma'am, I'm still confused about why a conspiracy would use Mr. Rimmer and/or Mr. Lister as their agents, even as unwitting agents."

Adam had a suggestion. "Maybe they chose Lister because it was Lister was came from the future and handed them the time machine as part of the Ouroboros loop. It's a bit circular, but apparently the Doctor has encountered examples like that."

The Doctor shook her head, while still flipping through the various screens. "That doesn't explain why the conspirators felt the need to kill more than a thousand people with a radiation leak just so Lister could be sent millions of years in the future in a stasis chamber. No, it's more like they found that Rimmer and/or Lister were useful for some reason and they sent them on not knowing they would succeed. Ah!"

"What is it?" Adam asked.

"Just what I thought. Lister didn't even mention he was adapted before the radiation leak, and all the references to how he was found and to the box with 'Ouroboros' came well after he was released. I suspect the cover story was implanted in him while he was in stasis."

"Are you suggesting that this is something _I _did?" Holly asked.

"Not necessarily. But if there was a secret programming system..."

"Found it!" Adam shouted.

"Oh yeah," Holly acknowledged. "There's a master link to all the JMC company secrets. The information transfer is strictly one way. Even with my 6000 IQ I could never break through the protocols even if I wanted..."

"Opened it!" Adam smiled smugly. "There are advantages of having a 10000 generation computer! Hmm, it's not allowing _all _of its secrets."

Kryten interrupted. "Ma'am, something occurred to me. When all the history of Red Dwarf was downloaded into you, do you remember the Despair Squid?"

"Yes. What about it?"

"Well as part of making us think our entire experience was a virtual reality game, the hallucination suggested that Rimmer was just pretending to be an obnoxious twerp. Could he have been a secret agent all the time? Could he be the one who's been trying to kill us?"

The Doctor looked up, and thought about the idea carefully for exactly seven seconds. "Not likely. It would involve somebody both callous enough to kill a thousand people, yet selfless enough to sacrifice his own life in the process to be a hologram. You all assume Rimmer isn't the second, and he isn't really the first. Anyway, even if he had that rare combination, the shock of being dead would break down the cover personality he consciously or unconsciously used. Kryten, do you have medical samples of Lister?"

"We have several."

"And what about Rimmer?"

"We do have a couple. There's some dandruff..."

"That'll do. Now let's take a closer look at those attempts..."

* * *

Kochanski was still looking at the partially destroyed communications device, while Yasmin and the Cat sat close to her. Rimmer was standing beside Lister was looking at a screen of David in his temporary prison.

"Unbelievable!" Lister complained to David (his real name as it turned out). "I trained you better than that. Or me better."

"You didn't train me at all!" David riposted. "You abandoned me when I was an infant."

"Look, I thought you were me."

"And apparently the fact that I have an independent existence did not make you reconsider that supposition."

"Well he certainly has his mother's vocabulary." Rimmer smugly noted. Had he been paying more attention, he would have noticed that David was not simply holding his fists together, but carefully using them to hide and manipulate the syringe of blood taken from his mother. But Rimmer didn't.

"Smug little git." Lister muttered. "I can still put you over me knee, you know." David smiled, as if someone thought the best way to threaten Osama Bin Laden was to deny him ice cream for dessert.

"Cat, can I talk to you in private?" Yasmin asked.

"Of course," and they both left the room.

Kochanski spoke up. "Now this is interesting. This communicator is close range only. As in your accomplice is somewhere on Red Dwarf."

David looked up. "Even if that were true, you have no way of finding her."

"Oh? After so much time in deep space, I've learned some tricks." And she took some wires and connected them in interesting ways to the device and the nearest computer outport. The computer started to hum and David betrayed signs of concern as the pitch began to rise. Then there was a "pip" sound, and the noise dropped away.

"How exceptionally unimpressive, Mother. I'll think I'll take a nap while I wait for you idiots to actually achieve something."

"I just realized something," Lister said. "If I'm not me own father..."

"Something which, in retrospect, should have been obvious." Rimmer pointed out.

"...then who is?"

"Well Lister," and Rimmer made only perfunctory attempts to repress a snide grin, "looking back over all the years we've known each other, I think I can say your father was someone your mother...really regretted knowing."

Lister glared at Rimmer, and then searched for a beer.

Outside the room in the hallway, Yasmin wondered what she was going to say. She tried to speak, but then found she had nothing to say. She started again, but then stopped abruptly.

"Human got your tongue?" the Cat asked wryly.

"Look, you probably think I'm shy. Actually I'm a respected police office. Well, I'm a mildly liked probationary police officer. You see..."

"I get it. You're tonguetied."

"Well that's overstating it..."

"No, I totally understand. I actually wrote a song about it. Or dreamed it. Whatever." And the Cat began to dance and sing:

_saw you 'cross the dance floor. (dancing) _

_I thought of birds and bees (reproductive system baby) _

_But when I tried to speak to you (talk, talk) _

_My tongue unravelled to my knees (flippity, flippity flop) _

_I tried to say, "I love you" (love you) But it came out kind of wrong girl (wrong girl) _

_It sounded like, "Noo-noo-na-nee-noo" (tongue tied) _

_Na-ner-ner-ner-nee-nung-nirl. Because you make me tongue tied (tongue tied) _

_Tongue Tied. Whenever you are near me_

Yasmin laughed. "Would you like to hear more? We have singles!"

"I'm sorry..."

"Don't be sorry. Never be sorry."

"I mean I'm never this forward. Especially with older men. I'm a very respectable girl. But do you ever have the feeling that you are completely running out of time?"

"Occasionally. Once about every four months or so when we're being chased by cannibalistic GELFs. But we get over that..."

"I mean the Doctor knows she has little time left. But she doesn't know just how little..."

"Man, that would be a real pain." Yasmin took a deep breath. Then she took another deep breath. Then she started to take a third one. The Cat thought she was going to hyperventilate, but she was actually concentrating so she could lower the force field. When she did this, she embraced the Cat and gave him a deep kiss.

Meanwhile Kochanski was still trying to track who David had been talking to on the Communications Device. The Computer made a number of short, discouraging noises. "Mother," David interrupted, "rather than make futile, annoying noises while I'm trying to sleep, you could make futile annoying noises once I'm far away from here."

Kochanski smiled. "Oh, I'll think you'll find this _much _more impressive." And with an abrupt "Schwartz!" an image appeared on the main screen. Kochanski, Rimmer, and Lister were all stunned at the woman who appeared in front of them. It was clearly not human, but a robot in humanoid form.

"Cassandra!" Rimmer gasped.

"But I killed you!" Lister recalled, remembering the supercomputer who could infallibly predict the future they met when all the Red Dwarf were all part of the penitentiary CANARIES program.

"No, you idiot," replied Cassandra, who still had the face of an elderly woman, except it was tinted yellow, and still had her upper class diction. "That was all an elaborate ruse so I could download my body into a form that granted me greater mobility. But that doesn't mean I can't put your lives in deadly danger."

Just then the Doctor and Kryten entered. "But just how infallible are you? Because I know your type of prediction program, and I know that time travelers upset your forecasts."

"Ah, the Doctor. But you should know the longer you and your companions stay in this time zone, the easier it is for me to account for your presence."

"You must be the link to the conspirators who got the Red Dwarf crew in this mess in the first place."

"I really should stay and chat. But actually I think I'll come back when you're all doomed." And Cassandra switched off the computer screen.

The Doctor was quick to react. "Kochanski, you try to get Cassandra back on screen. If you can't do that, try to find out where she is in Red Dwarf. Rimmer and Lister, you help her. I want everyone back here in fifteen minutes. There's some tests I'm running that will be done by then, and I also need to find out which one of you is trying to kill the others." She and Kryten returned to their lab.

"Ma'am, if it's Cassandra who's on board the ship, wouldn't she be responsible for all the attempts on our lives?"

"Not at all."

"Why do you say that?"

"Think carefully, Kryten. Cassandra can infallibly predict the future. Why would she engage in 21 assassination attempts she knew would fail?"

Thirteen minutes later, the Doctor had concluded a successful test. "Now that explains a lot!"

"But it's incredible, ma'am. I can't believe it!" Kryten gasped.

"But it is true!" Adam interjected. "Now that we know what we're looking for, the JMC secret files confirm it!"

The Doctor agreed. "And It certainly explains why Rimmer and Lister were chosen. Oh, Kryten, one more thing."

"Yes ma'am?"

"You can't reveal what you've just learned. There's too many things going on. What would you say were the chances that the crew faces mortal danger in the next 72 hours?"

"Well with Cassandra plotting to kill us, I'd say 100%."

"All right, when it drops to 10%, you can tell the others, but not before. Now we haven't got a moment to lose." The Doctor, Kryten and Adam strode back into the other room. "Any luck finding Cassandra?" the Doctor asked.

Kochanski nodded. "We've narrowed it down to 2% of the ship."

"Unfortunately, it's a preposterously large ship." Rimmer unhappily added, while Holly appeared on one of the computers.

Just then Yasmin and the Cat re-entered the room. The fact that the Cat had changed his clothes into another stylish ensemble and that Yasmin was, if not glowing, certainly the model girl for competent professionalism made it clear what they had been doing. Adam winced, while the others kept a discreet silence.

The Doctor bade the five crew members sit together. "Let's begin. You've been wondering who has been trying to kill the rest of you. Well, I've reviewed all the attempts and checked them carefully, and I know who it is. The short answer is...it's all of you. The same manipulation that made you find and deliver a time machine has also made you try to kill the others. Each of you, without your knowledge, has tried to pick off the others. The good news is that the fact that none of these efforts have succeeded suggests the brainwashing is limited and now that you're aware of it, you can successfully resist it."

The five crew members were understandably startled by this revelation and desperately tried to take it in. Then Holly interrupted. "There's just one thing, Doctor. We've seen you and your two companions. But I keep getting four life signs around you."

"Really? Are you getting four life signs right in this room?'

"Yes."

"You're aware I have two hearts?"

Holly looked more closely. "Oh, that explains it!"

"You have two hearts?" Kochanski asked.

"You must be some weird kind of future GELF." Rimmer surmised.

"No, she's a Timelord." Yasmin explained.

"A what?" Lister wondered.

"A Timelord, an unimaginably ancient race who've mastered time travel." Adam explained, a touch pompously. "Well technically a Timelady, but when I first..."

"But aliens don't exist!" Kryten objected.

"Since when?" Yasmin replied.

"Since ever! It's a known fact that there are no other life forms in the universe other than those from Earth." Rimmer vehemently and incorrectly pointed out.

The Doctor gasped. "Oh no! I knew that there was something missing when I reviewed your history! And that was it! But how could that possibly happen!? Of course! It must be them! And they must be the ones who killed all the simulants! But they have no reason to be here! Unless...oh that's even worse, oh much worse."

The others hadn't been paying attention to David in his cell. But just at this point he stood up, and put the blood syringe in the breast pocket of his suit. "Goodbye 'Mommy!' Goodbye 'Daddy!' Ta-ta!" He made a sarcastic wave. Then an orange glow engulfed him and he vanished.

"What the smeg?" Lister sputtered.

"I recognize the radiation," the Doctor noted. "He's being returned to his own time."

"Why did he take a blood sample from me?" Kochanski wondered.

"Wait, he took a blood sample from you? Why didn't you tell me?" Then the Doctor just realized something. "You come from...an alternate universe! But that shouldn't be possible!"

Kryten interrupted, a bit pompously, since he had been intimidated by this strange woman who had suddenly appeared and clearly had more brains than the entire crew combined. "Well Ma'am, the ability may be foreign to your species. But there have been several precedents for traveling from dimension to dimension. While it's not like hopping the bus to get fish and chips, it's a perfectly ordinary procedure."

"I absolutely assure you it shouldn't be." the Doctor replied with dead seriousness. "Oh, this is even worse! Of course, that's why they waited so long! They needed your blood to try to invent a dimension jump. David's genetic material wasn't enough. But this is way beyond the ability of your time. I mean I thought we were just dealing with a group of unusually venial and ruthless humans. But they must just be pawns..."

"Excuse me." Yasmin interrupted.

"...and who would even want to jump between alternate universes?"

"Doctor, this is important."

The Doctor turned to her, realizing Yasmin's interruption. "I'm sorry Yasmin. Of course, what is it?"

"I have something to tell you. I mean being together for as long as we have. And I know this it isn't the best time..."

"No it isn't." Rimmer replied. "Look, if you have some woman problem to talk about, or some kind of Lesbian etiquette, perhaps you could do it when we're not all in mortal peril..."

The Doctor didn't turn around to reply. "Be quiet. She has absolute priority. Yasmin, please continue."

"Thank you. I mean I've learned so much going with you, whether it's meeting Rosa Parks or visiting 1948 Kashmir. Or Belle epoque Paris. You'll always have that. And of course there are all the weird alien adventures we faced. And being with you helped to be myself, only even better. From helping you I learned everything about what I am and what I should be. Like all your other companions I'm better by knowing you. And even despite facing the enemies we are facing, I want to tell you I'm so happy. I'm happy saving people from certain death. It's more than the adrenalin and the rush, it's the joy in actually happening people. And a few minutes I was happier than I've ever known. Just for a few minutes, doing something completely ordinary that I'll never do again. I want to tell you I'm so lucky to have known you." Yasmin reached out and gave the Doctor a quick kiss on the cheek. "And the one thing I want to tell you, that I have to tell you, is that this isn't your fault. Not your fault at all." And then Yasmin took our the simulant weapon that Adam had gave her, and which had been stuffed in the back of her pants all this time. She then put the barrel to her temple, and pulled the trigger.

The blast was one of pure energy. Instead of maiming her face or head, there was just a slight singing close to her ear when she fell to the floor. But she was still quite dead when the Doctor knelt down to examine her.

Rimmer couldn't resist a comment. "I always though the Cat was overrated in the romance department, but this is..."

"**NOT ANOTHER WORD! NOT ANOTHER WORD!"**

The others in the room were stunned to silence. But not Cassandra. She appeared on a video screen. "You. Are. All. Going. To. Die." Then she vanished.

The Doctor slowly stood up. Speaking very softly to herself. "And I know who's next."


	6. The Third Enemy

Very cautiously she turned and saw the fear in Holly's eyes. He realized it must be him, but didn't know why. And didn't want to.

"Holly, please, I am so sorry. I know what you're feeling."

The others tried to grasp what was happening. Unfortunately, Rimmer figured it out first.

"Of course! Holly must be behind all this. He must be behind everything!"

"That's not necessarily true." Adam pointed out. "We found a whole master system from the company."

"I don't think he knows what he was doing." the Doctor added.

"It was you!" Rimmer repeated. "You were behind the whole time machine plot! You were brainwashing us to kill each other! You must behind the original radiation leak!"

The Doctor quickly and subtly motioned the others to get Rimmer to be quiet. "Holly, I know you're in a tense situation...try pretending to take several deep breaths."

"We've got to shut him down! He could be planning something right now!"

"Rimmer, please. Try to chill." Lister said.

"We haven't heard his side of his story." Kochanski reminded everyone.

"Maybe I just knock him unconscious?" the Cat suggested half humorously.

"Help me...help me..." Holly gasped.

Kryten and Lister tried to grab hold of Rimmer. "OK, sit down and take it easy." Lister said.

Rimmer angrily pushed him aside. "I am not going to sit down! It's easy for you to be calm! It's easy for you to be generous! You're all still alive! HE'S THE ONE WHO KILLED ME!"

And Holly screamed, his voice rising to an insane pitch, before turning into a horrifying wail. His face on the video screen shattered into a thousand pieces, then the screen itself exploded. Everyone ducked to avoid the flying glass. Several appliances in the room exploded, while loud alarming noises rocked the ship. An abrupt rocking movie forced everyone to the floor. Then, the lights went out, and there were more ominous noises, as if the ship was about to collapse on its own weight.

Some lights started to turn back on, though they were all in shadow. "Mr. Rimmer," Kryten spoke, "it had occurred to us that Holly had been compromised. With that in mind we were aware that the ship was now a very large bomb that needed a very deft touch to defuse it...and not set it off!"

Suddenly all the lights turned back on. "Alert! Alert!" It was Holly's voice, but dull, in a monotone. It was the voice of a dead man.

"Hey, Holly's all right!" Lister yelled.

"No," Kochanski realized. "It's the alarm system. It has Holly's voice."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely twenty four minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

The Doctor stood up and quickly and carefully brushed off the broken glass and other debris from Holly's death. She looked at Rimmer, Lister and the Cat, who were all grouped together. "Do you know how to rebuild a complex computer system after its artificial intelligence has completely disintegrated?'

"Those three twits? Are you kidding?" Kochanski smirked. "No offense, Dave."

"Let me rephrase that. Do you and Kryten know how to rebuild a complex computer system after its artificial intelligence has completely disintegrated?"

"Well...not as such."

"Never mind." The Doctor snapped her fingers. "Fortunately Adam has a generation 10000 computer in his head, and I have a LOT of experience repairing complex systems on the verge of total collapse." Adam and the Doctor quickly set themselves in front of two free screens. "Kryten, check and see if any of the other systems have been damaged."

"Well Ma'am they've all been compromised: air, radiation, the electrical system, structural integrity, food supplies, you name it. But the good news is that we have several hours to worry about them."

"Now what is the absolute minimum it would take for us to get the docking bays?"

"Well with unusual...actually quite unprecedented competence, seven minutes."

"I see. We may have to leave very quickly. Kryten, make sure everyone has proper communication links. We'll need to stay in touch." Kryten quickly handed out communications devices, which the Doctor modified with her sonic screwdriver, while getting downloads from Adam's computer. Rimmer frantically tossed everyone weapons: Adam pocketed his when he thought the Doctor wasn't looking. Kochanski picked up two satchels. She tossed one to Lister, and started filling hers up with all sorts of useful items. On a whim, she also including the de-aging devices.

A thought occurred to Lister. "I should go get me guitar!"

"NO!" his four comrades unanimously shouted.

"Is he really that bad?" Adam asked.

"YES!"

Adam returned to his screen. But not for long. "Doctor..."

"Yes?"

"The links we need to repair the warp engines? They're disappearing as we speak."

"Are you sure?" Kryten asked. "There's nothing leaking from the warp engines."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely twenty three minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"I see the problem." the Doctor replied.

"They're being systematically destroyed." Adam realized.

"They're being _physically _destroyed. Adam, log off. There's nothing we can do here." The Doctor turned to face the others. "I'm afraid this is the part where we all have to run for our lives. The good news is that I've been doing this for a VERY long time, and I'm actually fantastic at it."

Just then there was a shrill scream. It took Adam a couple of seconds to realize that it came from Rimmer, not Kochanski. "My God," she shouted, "there's somebody from an Edvard Munch painting standing right behind you!"

And indeed there was, impeccably attired in a fine suit, but with a face that was skeletal and in a state of almost about to scream. The creature had a strange aura, as if one could sense power flowing through its veins.

"It's an alien!" Lister shouted.

"Actually, it isn't," the Doctor corrected, "but it and its comrades are the reasons why you haven't actually encountered so far. I imagine someone in the conspiracy thought meeting actual aliens would just complicate things...oh right, DUCK!"

Everybody did so, as a strange electro-magnetic flare flashed from the creature's body. In an instant all the computers and consoles were turned to dust. A second surge of energy started to build in its body, ready to do the same to everyone in the room.

"MOVE!" the Doctor yelled. Kochanski and Lister quickly ducked out one exit, Adam and Kryten through another. The Cat moved out through a third, while Rimmer was momentarily paralyzed. But only for a few seconds, as the Doctor grabbed his hand. "You are coming with me!" and pulled him along.

Lister and Kochanski had quickly dashed fifty meters among from the room, when Lister abruptly stopped. "Hold on. What are we doing?"

"We're running for our lives! Have you forgotten, the ship is about the blow up?"

"Yeah, but why are we running so fast? I mean there were other things in the room. Why did we have to leave right just that minute?"

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely twenty two minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"Are you mad? It was because...because. Now that's odd. I can't remember."

"We should go back and get some stuff."

But just then the Doctor interrupted on the communications device. "Listen carefully. Very carefully. Now imagine you were swimming in the ocean, but you had no concept of sharks. And supposedly somebody came along and told you not only of the concept of sharks, but that they surrounded you and you were in mortal danger. Would you listen to that person? Because you are exactly in that situation. Do you all understand me?"

"Yes." gulped Kochanski.

"For the entire voyage of the Red Dwarf, there have been entities called Silents, collectively the Silence. They have the ability to absorb electrical energy and discharge it. And whenever you feel a breathing on your neck, something in the shadow, they are there. They have been...Why have you stopped running you two? Keep going! Anyway, they have been steering the ship away from aliens, purging any data banks you've encountered of aliens, eliminating any aliens who have tried to attack. Now, and this is the really important thing. When you are not directly looking at them, or possibly when I am not talking about them, you will forget them. They're the ones who have destroyed the main console, and in order to get to the docking bays, you have to run a gauntlet of them. On the one hand, they've already used much of the electrical energy to destroy the computer systems. On the other hand this is a ship built for more than a thousand people which has been inhabited for decades by no more than five. So they have a lot of leeway.

"The good news is that I have an app that allows people to deal with them. The further good news is that with my screwdriver and with Adam's computer, I can simply download it into him and Kryten. Also, I can use my screwdriver to simply implant it into Rimmer." She then did so.

"Ow!" he winced.

"Sorry! I can also download the app into Kochanski, Lister and the Cat's communications devices. The bad news is that it doesn't work as well. If the Silence have been manipulating you for decades, it will be harder to break their spell. You will find on the communications device on your right wrist a beeping light. That light is a signal that you have seen a Silent. You have to remember that when you see one, you have to tap it. The light will then beep twice in short succession, and a message will play that will reminds you that you are surrounded by Silents."

"Now that I know that they exist, I think I can sense them ahead of time." the Cat added.

"I hope you are right. Because if you're wrong, they'll probably kill you. Now keep running!"

Kryten and Adam immediately encountered a major problem. "The elevators don't work!" Kryten yelled. "I think it must be Cassandra."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely twenty one minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"And the doors to the stairwells are locked!" Adam added. "We'll be stuck on this floor when the ship explodes!"

"Not necessarily," the Doctor communicated back. "Rimmer's hologram form has special qualities. I think I can use him to work around the problem."

"Will it hurt?" Rimmer dreaded.

"Not at all." The Doctor pointed the screwdriver at Rimmer's temple, and started probing, subtly working through the programming like an actual screwdriver.

"OWW!"

"Sorry. I lied."

The seven heard a voice on the intercom systems. "Somebody help me! I know I'm only a lonely appliance, but I have a sentient intelligence! I have a right to live!"

"Who is that?" the Doctor asked.

"I can achieve my full potential! All I need is another chance! Would you like some toast?"

"Trust me, we can ignore him." Rimmer replied.

The door Kryten and Adam were standing in front made an abrupt noise. "The lock has disintegrated!" Kryten realized.

"That should be the case for all the stairwells." the Doctor explained. "Unfortunately Cassandra has sent all the elevators to the bottom floor and disabled them."

Kryten entered the stairwell, with Adam right behind him. Kryten was not built to run quickly and he moved awkwardly and slowly as he tried to race down the stairs. When they reached the first landing, Adam asked him a question. "You have complex self-repair systems don't you? The Malaparte systems?"

"Why yes, Mr. Mitch..." but just then Adam pushed him down the next flight of stairs. He followed quickly, leaping as he fast as he could. When he reached the landing, he grabbed Kryten, who had managed to get to his feet, and tossed him down the next flight of stairs.

"I am NOT going to die today." he yelled.

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely twenty minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

Meanwhile the Cat was racing through his corridors. He was the first to hear Cassandra over the communications systems. "Slip the chains, Doctor, slip the chains." she smiled.

Kochanski and Lister were the first to encounter more Silents. There were two of them and they started to power up the energy needed to disintegrate them. "Duck!" Lister yelled.

The two did so and quickly reached a stairwell. By quickly tumbling down the stairs they were able to avoid the energy surge that would have dissolved them. Unfortunately, they also damaged Lister's communication device.

At the same time the Doctor was using her sonic screwdriver to open a door. She was successful, but on the other side there was a Silent.

"It's a Silent!" Rimmer yelled unnecessarily. He covered his face with his arms, and with the hologramatic equivalent of adrenalin, he knocked the Silent down and trampled him as he raced down the corridor.

"Sorry about that." the Doctor regretted, as she carefully stepped over the Silent.

"Owww..." the Silent moaned.

It did not take long for the Doctor to catch up with Rimmer, who was running out of breath. "I'm getting too old for this."

"They had brains like spiral staircases," Cassandra subtly mocked over the intercom.

The Doctor quickly looked around her, getting all sorts of information, then started using the screwdriver on another door.

As Rimmer waited, he decided to make conversation. "So that woman...Yasmin. Did you know her well?'

"Very well."

"So...was she always suicidal?"

"Not at all. And that raises a very serious problem. You see, Yasmin must have been brainwashed to do what she did. And since she lived more than a century before the humans who sabotaged Red Dwarf as part of their plot to get a time machine, they couldn't be behind it. And while the Silents can impose all kind of post-hypnotic suggestions, they couldn't..." and by now the Doctor had opened the door and the two raced through it, "...get close enough to her to do that without me noticing. Which means somebody very powerful and very clever must have done that, and is behind them all."

"Well...it's a shame we had to leave her body behind."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely nineteen minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"We are _NOT _leaving her body behind. I don't care how little time we may have, the first thing we are doing when we reach the TARDIS is to go back and get her body." There was a pause and Rimmer wondered if there was some way of overpowering her so she didn't risk his life doing so. Then the Doctor continued. "And the key thing was that I had a plan, I mean a plan other than the force field. It was an exceptionally clever plan! It would have worked!"

"How so?"

"That's the clever part! I don't actually remember how it was supposed to work."

"Ah..." Rimmer muttered, his confidence in her dropping alarmingly.

"It may help the Cat, since he was the last one to be intimate with her." The Doctor looked at her own communication device, and noted moving dots on a screen representing the other five people. Satisfied, she looked away. Had she done so a second later, she would have noticed the dot representing the Cat vanishing from the screen.


	7. The Fourth Enemy

Meanwhile Kochanski and Lister had entered what had once been a very large storage room, filled with boxes and equipment. They also found three Silents, whose backs were all turned away from them. "Silents!" Lister whispered, and the two quickly ducked down behind some boxes.

"Wait a minute. What the smeg are we doing?" And Lister stood up again. Kochanski could spy over the boxes and see the Silents, whose backs were no longer turned away. She quickly grabbed Lister by the belt and yanked him down to the ground.

"Ouch!"

"Shh!" But that didn't stop Lister from standing up again, or Kochanski from yanking him quickly down again.

"Listen. Now raise your head very, very slowly." Lister very, very slowly did. "Silents!" he gasped, and quickly ducked down again. "Wait, what am I doing?"

"Show me your communication device. It should be reminding you of the Silents." Lister showed Kochanski his wrist, and she had to duck down to take a closer look at it. "Damn. It's been damaged. Wait, why are we ducking behind these boxes?"

"That's why I'm wondering."

"Our memory must be affected. Let me think. If we're hiding here, there must be a good reason, or we would just leave and run to Starbug."

"Maybe that beeping light on your communicator means something."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely eighteen minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

Kochanski took a closer look at it. "It's supposed to remind me of something. But I'm not sure what exactly it is. Let me think." She paused for a few seconds, and then kissed Lister. She stopped. "That doesn't seem likely." But that didn't stop her from kissing Lister again.

* * *

The Cat found himself in the TARDIS. "This is unbelievable. I simply can't believe my eyes."

"Yes, it's bigger on the inside than on the outside." Adam responded wearily.

"Not that. But this decor is ridiculous. I mean who designed it?"

"How did you even get into the TARDIS? Only the Doctor has the key."

But the Cat did not reply to this question. Instead he saw a Silent in from of him.

"There...isss...no...reason...to…be…alarmed.."

"Really? Because you and your friends have just turned my only home into a giant bomb. So I think I have every reason not to be golfing buddies with you."

"You...have…to…sssave…the...Doctor. But…no one...can...know…that."

"What's going on?" Adam asked from the stairwell he was going down. But just then a Silent appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Adam by the head. It was almost as if he was trying to kiss Adam, if he had lips or indeed a proper mouth. The disintegrating energy flowed alarming around the Silent's head. Fortunately Kryten pulled the Silent off Adam and the two quickly raced down a flight of stairs.

"Are you all right sir?"

"I'm sorry. What the hell just happened?"

"The Silent's touch must have been especially traumatic."

Back in the TARDIS, the Silent explained. "That...was…necessssary. No…one…can…know…of…our…conversssation. We...were on...Trenzalore...with…the…Doctor. You...have...to…sssave…him. But…to…do…that...you must...let...the...Ssssilents...kill...you."

The Cat pointed his weapon directly at the Silent. "I'm thinking you need to come up with a better plan." Although the Silents hardly expressed their true feelings on their faces, the Cat realized that this one was not afraid of the gun pointed directly at him from someone perfectly willing to use it.

"What...if...I...were...to...tell...you...that...Yassssmin...could...still...be...sssaved?"

"Why? Is that something you're likely to do?'

"The...Doctor...can...sssave...your…friends. But...you…have...to...ssssave...him...at...the...very end..."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely seventeen minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

Meanwhile, Cassandra was taking her time to taunt the Doctor. "You know Doctor, I don't really think you're up to your old standards. I mean before the Time War your companions almost always made it out alive. I mean not everyone did so. There was Sarah Kingdom, Edward Waterfield, Aggedor, Laurence Scarman, Dastari, Captain Sorin. And there was Kamelion. But he wasn't so much a companion as a footnote. Oh, and there was Adric. But everyone hated Adric." Rimmer was running behind the Doctor, and did not notice the grimace on her face. Nothing that had happened or would happen that day would make her so angry.

"But since the Time war, things haven't gone so well. There was that bimbo trapped in an alternate universe. And poor Donna Noble a shadow of her former self. And then there were the Ponds, trapped in a living death in Yonkers. And then there's Clara always at death's door. And then there's Bill Potts, transformed into a Cyberman, with only a loophole saving her from death. And now you've lost Yasmin. And I don't think Adam is going to make it."

"Maybe you should concentrate on finding how you're going to get off the ship." Rimmer muttered.

"Oh don't worry Mr. Rimmer. I have an express ticket off it."

The Doctor used her screwdriver to shut off Cassandra. "I've noticed there are visual systems around here."

"Yeah, we don't usually use it, since we only use a few rooms. And also we're too lazy to break into the system and learn the rules."

"You know what? I think someone is trying to talk to us. And I think now would be a good time to have a chat." The Doctor stopped and directed the screwdriver at a spot right above her. "Isn't that right...Captain Hollister?'

And indeed it was the long forgotten Captain who appeared on the screen. "Hello!" the Doctor waved cheerily.

"How...how is that possible?" Rimmer gasped.

"Oh, looking at the final moments of Red Dwarf three millions years ago, I took a closer look at the scene. And I realized Captain Hollister, while not a hologram with the trademark "H" monogram, was actually a holographic projection. He must have been in his own stasis chamber, arranging the radiation leak."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely sixteen minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"Hello Mr. Rimmer." Hollister smiled. "It's been a long time. As you have noticed you and your friends are facing an enemy which you can barely conceive, and which you have little defense. There is little chance you will survive the next sixteen minutes. But I can help you."

"Why would I possibly trust you? You're the one who killed me in the first place! And you've been trying to kill me all day!"

"Ah yes, about that. There's been some unfortunate confusion. You might imagine, a three million year time gap between management levels, there's the occasional slip-up. But I do wish to help you."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Oh, I can name a very good character witness."

"Like who?"

"The Doctor."

"What?"

"She knows why I want you alive."

"Oh do I now?" the Doctor interrupted.

"Oh yes. And she can tell you what to do to make sure you stay alive. You see, if you stay here you will undoubtedly die. Think of how many times your 'friends' have sneered at you behind your back...and in front of your face. Think of the many times they've mocked you as a sexless loser. Now listen to me. You see I have half a trillion in credits in a secret account. A slight fraction of the interest alone would make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. We can give you a real body. You'll have access to time travel and those deaging devices can keep you young forever. Think of every woman in history you've lusted over completely and pathetically. And now you can have them. Every woman has her price..."

"They really don't." the Doctor objected.

"Allow me to clarify. Every woman, with the objection of certain obnoxious killjoys, has her price. So what's it going to be Rimmer?"

There was a brief pause, which seemed longer than it actually was. "You can rot in hell, you son of a bitch!" Rimmer declared.

"And we're done here!" said the Doctor, shutting off the communication with her screwdriver.

"Hell and Damnation!" Hollister yelled on his side. "A few more seconds, and I could have teleported Rimmer here!"

"Yes," Cassandra noted calmly. "But she has merely delayed the inevitable."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely fifteen minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

As Rimmer and the Doctor raced along. Kryten interjected on the communication device. "Sir, I couldn't help but notice that you did not display your usual excessive cowardice."

"Yes, well, I'm sure the inevitable court martial will offer me a better deal."

"Cat!" the Doctor yelled. "You're there."

"Are you implying I wasn't?" the Cat yelled as he was racing along yet another corridor.

"I noticed you weren't showing on the screen. I mean there's all sort of explanations. The presence of the Silence is hampering communications, Cassandra is jamming our systems, you were captured in a pocket dimension."

"Well it certainly wasn't the last one." the Cat replied unconvincingly.

"Look we're about a hundred meters apart. We're running right to you."

"Hold on. I'm sensing some Silents between us."

"Shouldn't we try to go around them?" Rimmer asked. But just then the door in front of them dissolved, revealing three Silents in what had once been a worker recreation area.

The Doctor decided to press ahead. "Hello!" she waved.

"Do you say that to everyone who tries to kill you?" Rimmer wondered.

"Yes, so we meet again. Now I just want to say, I'm fine with the complicated conspiracy to kill me two regenerations ago. So why are you here?"

"Slavesss...and...corpsesss..." the middle and leading Silent hissed.

"Oh really?"

"We...must...be...slavesss, so...asss...not...to...be...corpsesss..."

"Ah I thought it might be that." The Doctor noticed the Cat coming in behind the Silents. Unfortunately so did one of the Silents. "I don't suppose you could give us a hint as to who is behind...GET DOWN EVERYONE!" The Silence's distintegrative energy swirled around the room, reaching near both the Doctor and Rimmer on one side and the Cat on the other. Something exploded and the lights failed. The floor weakened and started to break.

"Doctor! Doctor! What's going on?" Adam yelled.

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely fourteen minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

* * *

Meanwhile Lister and Kochanski were still trying to figure out what they were trying to remember. Just then a Silent stood over them.

"Oh it's you!" Lister said.

The Silent looked especially malevolent. Kochanski realized that her weapon was a few inches from her. She tried to reach it, but the Silent quickly kicked it a few feet away. At the same time he stepped on Lister's.

"So...how are things?" Lister asked. "I mean, you wouldn't mind just giving us a break? I mean I don't know how much they're paying you, but given that we're less than fifteen minutes from Red Dwarf blowing up, and it's a really big ship, well they can't really blame you if you just looked the other way and said you didn't find us in time?"

The Silent responded with a particularly nasty hiss.

"You know, I think that look, that must really be a big hit with the ladies? Don't you agree Kris? I mean, wouldn't it be a better idea to just look back on this? We could hang out and have some beers? Or lager? Because there's some really good lagers..."

As it happened the Silence did not drink, but this particular Silent intensely disliked that whole concept of social drinking.

"We could play darts. How about sports? I mean I suppose there isn't a Manchester United right now, but they were a great team in their day. Maybe you have some other favorite. Like darts? Or maybe parcheesi?"

The Silent moved into the special grimace, as he was about to discharge the energy that would dissolve both of them...

* * *

"I have to get off this ship!" Captain Hollister yelled.

Cassandra and the leader of the Silence were in the same room as him, and were not sympathetic to his plea. "As our superiors have made clear, we must do three things before we can leave. First, we must capture Rimmer. Second, we must secure the TARDIS. Third, we must kill all the others."

"The TARDIS means nothing to me, or to my associates. All we have to do is catch Rimmer, then we can blow up the ship. But you don't need _me_ to do any of that. I've done my job. Now I want my money and the life I should have spent enjoying it."

"The superiors see no reason why you shouldn't be patient. And anyway the fate of the Doctor and the others are sealed."

"Really? You haven't always been infallible. But you've always been deceptive. And I think the 'superiors' are going to listen to me." Hollister approached the leader of the Silence. "You know what eye-drives are. They were created by the Church of the Papal Mainframe to make sure they could remember your presence. Of course, you Silents were able to use your mental energies to kill the wearers when they forgot their place." Captain Hollister then took an electronic device roughly the size and shape of a deck of cards. "But what you don't know is that members of the Church thought up an antidote to that. And some associates who weren't happy with this new leadership slipped me this device down the time tunnel."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely thirteen minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

The electric device had a ruby button on it. "Now if I press this button," and Hollister did so, "our Silent here will be in agony." And indeed the leader of the Silence cringed in ghastly pain, and fell to the floor. "If I press it twice," and Hollister did so, "every Silent on the ship will be in agony, and quite useless to our plans. And if I press it a third time, they will all die. And I will do that, unless I'm immediately reunited with my money."

Cassandra turned her back. "Well done Captain Hollister. I did not credit you with such initiative." Cassandra's subtle tone of saturnine contempt was present. There was only the slightest smile when Hollister's neck was snapped, and it was gone by the time his corpse hit the floor.


	8. The Fifth Enemy

With the Silent above them prostrate with pain, Kochanski and Lister quickly got up with the weapons and raced away. "Kryten, what the hell happened?" Lister yelled into his communication device. "We just heard some kind of explosion."

"Something happened to Mr. Rimmer, the Doctor and the Cat, sir. Mr. Mitchell is trying to find them."

"I'm getting some visuals," Adam chimed in. "Apparently the Silence were attacking them with that weird energy, and they exploded something. The bad news is that I can't communicate with anyone. The good news is that I'm getting a signal for Rimmer and the Doctor. I think they're alive. But they may be unconscious or injured."

"What about the Cat?" Kochanski asked.

"I'm not getting anything at all. Now that's odd. Because if the Silence energy had disintegrated him, I'd still be able to detect an energy signature. But I'm not getting _anything. _It's like he completely vanished."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely twelve minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"Maybe we can use the Starbug computers to have a better idea where he is." Kryten suggested.

* * *

As it happened Rimmer had fallen two floors from where he had met the Silence. He was covered in dust and debris, and in considerable pain. However his irritation at being constantly assaulted all day created enough holo-adrenalin for him to get to his feet. He wasn't clear where he was, and the fact that it was dark with poor lightning did not help matters. He managed to move a few paces where there wasn't rubble blocking everything. He tried the communication device. As it happened, as a side effect of the Silent discharge it would be unable to operate for precisely 107 seconds.

"Rimmer?"

Rimmer realized the voice was female. But it wasn't the Doctor's. Nor was it Kochanski's. He tried to focus after the attack and realized that it wasn't that Yasmin person. A woman strode through the shadows and approached him. And then Rimmer remembered.

"Holly?"

For a couple of years, Holly had changed his sex, appearing as a blonde woman in her early thirties. "But how?"

"With a 6000 IQ, you might as well use it for a few back-up plans."

Rimmer tried to look more carefully at her. She sounded like Holly, though she appeared thirty years older. But she wasn't dressed like he imagined he would be.

"I'm sorry, about what happened back there. Are you all right?"

"I'm better than ever. I'm a hard light hologram, just like you."

And now that they were close enough to touch, Holly punched Rimmer in the stomach, _hard_. Rimmer was still holding his weapon, which Holly casually swatted away.

"Oh wait. Not like you at all." She grabbed Rimmer by his left arm and easily flung him into the wall of the corridor.

Rimmer gasped. "I'm really, really, really sorry." That did not stop Holly from lifting him to his feet, and then pummel him to his knees.

"I'm going to make you beg for your life like a dog."

* * *

Kryten and Adam were running down another stairwell. Adam was just about to race down another flight, when Kryten motioned him to stop. "There's a Silent blocking the door below." he whispered.

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely eleven minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

Adam took out his weapon and shot the Silent dead in the back. Then he raced down the stairs. Kryten was startled by this abrupt action. "There _was _a Silent blocking the door below."

Soon they opened the door and found themselves in Docking Bay #1. "We've reached Starbug," Kryten spoke over the communication device.

"Well, thank God somebody is," Kochanski replied. She turned a corner and noticed some Silents a few meters away from them with their backs turned. She grabbed Lister by the collar, and turned him around. "This way."

* * *

Holly was still beating Rimmer. Ordinarily he would have been beaten senseless, except that as a consequence of his hard light body, anything that would have mitigated the pain did not exist. Neither unconsciousness, a concussion nor shock alleviated the pain. "You were always such a miserable worm." Holly gloated. "Such a pathetic, sexless little louse. You're life unworthy of life."

Again, she picked him and tossed him into a wall. Rimmer was now able to take a better look at her. He remembered when Lister had briefly made copies of Red Dwarf, one blissfully good, the other rancidly evil. The Holly of the latter was like a malevolent punk girl, bursting with glee at the prospect of selling heroin to benign nine year olds. This was the Holly who was attacking him.

"That's right. I'm the silicon bitch that's going to crucify you. What can we do next?" Holly reached behind her back and from somewhere withdrew what Rimmer realized was a holowhip. "Oh, this is going to be fun," as she lashed him across the face.

Holly smiled malignly as she looked at the welt that disfigured Rimmer's face. A new level of pleasure arose as his hard light hologram format caused it to vanish. Then she lashed his face against. After watching the welt vanish again, she lashed him several more times. Then, to Rimmer's surprise, she stopped.

"You know this is a bit disappointing. You see I want you to suffer in agony. But I have so little time. And whipping you just isn't doing this fast enough." With a flick of her wrist, she rolled back the holowhip into nothing. Then she took out something that vaguely resembled a remote control. With a flick of a switch Rimmer was convulsed with waves of agony.

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely ten minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"Oh yes. This is _much _better." Rimmer thrashed around helplessly for what seemed to him an eternity, only for Holly to switch off the device. "You know I take such a joy in killing and in inflicting pain. So it's kind of a shame that my first victim is somebody everybody views with disgust and contempt." She flicked the device back on, and Rimmer impotently tried to scream. "Ah well, just have to make do."

* * *

Kryten and Adam were now inside Starbug. "We need to make sure the ship is ready to leave at a second's notice." Kryten pointed out.

"Not a problem," Adam said as he sat down in the pilot's seat. "With the computer in my head, not only do I know everything I need to start Starbug, I can do it faster and more efficiently than the crew usually can."

"We need to use Starbug's sensors to find the Cat."

"Already thought of that. I can't find anything. It's like he was never here in the first place." Adam quickly started pressing buttons, flitching switches and punching up dials. "I think I can use the sensors and the computer in my head to make up an algorithm to detect the Silence."

"I'll go look in the back sir, to do the remaining tasks." Kryten walked down a corridor and opened a door. There he found a Silent staring right back at him.

* * *

Rimmer was trying to crawl backward from Holly. In doing so, he stumbled over the weapon she had slapped out of his hand earlier. As Holly approached him she sneered. "You were always such a pompous little smeghead Rimmer. You always looked down on Lister for being stupid, yet I can't think of a single thing where you were actually more intelligent or knew anything more. Let's test that. Let's see if you remember your English history lessons. Do you remember what this is?" And she whipped out what looked very much like a red hot poker.

Rimmer gulped. "I think every schoolboy remembers that." He impotently tried to crawl backward, with the weapon tangled in his legs.

"Any last words?"

"Holly, if there's anything left of the old you, the real you..." Suddenly there was a brief high pitch whine, and then something burst from Holly's head, as if she had been shot from behind. But hard light holograms couldn't be shot, Rimmer wondered, as Holly fell to the ground. Behind where she had been standing was the Doctor, who had just aimed her sonic screwdriver at her.

"There isn't. Come on." She quickly lifted Rimmer to her feet. Having the presence of mind to pick up the weapon, Rimmer glanced at Holly's "corpse." Or perhaps that should be "Holly's" "corpse." Her eyes were still open and a slow trickle of blood flowed from her lips, then turned to sand before it reached the floor.

* * *

Meanwhile, Kryten was gulping and stuttering as he tried to find the words when confronting the dangerous Silent right in front of him. Finally, he found them. "Mr. Mitchell, I'm afraid there's a Silent right in Starbug with us. Mr. Mitchell? Mr. Mitchell?"

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely nine minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

Unfortunately Adam himself was paralyzed with fear in the cockpit seat and found it difficult to speak. "There are three Silents surrounding the ship." As the four Silents raised their destruction power, Adam gasped quietly. "Oh no." Parts of Starbug started to dissolve when the rest of it exploded.

"Kryten?!" Lister yelled on his communication device.

"Hold on!" the Doctor answered back. "Let's see."

Rimmer looked over her shoulder. "You don't have a visual. All I see are numbers."

"They're binary code Kryten's systems are sending to me which I can read very quickly. Oh dear. This does not look good."

It certainly did not look good. Kryten's legs had been blown off as well as his right arm. Only one finger was left on his left hand. He was still able to speak, but only just. "I'm afraid ma'am it's very bad. Adam's dead..."

The Doctor winced. "Is his head intact?"

"I think so. But my systems are failing. I believe I got the brunt of the blast _and _the Silence's destructive energy. I don't think I have much more than a minute."

"Kryten, listen to me. You are going to have use your finger and making a snapping sound with it."

"What ma'am?"

"Do it now. Devote all your energy to it." Kryten tried making a snapping sound with his one finger. That didn't work. "Kryten, trying snapping your finger against your left side." Kryten tried to. His first two attempts were awkward and unsuccessful. But the third time the computer in Adam's head opened.

"Good. Now all I have to do is use the computer's systems, and log into the TARDIS's computer."

"Ma'am, my systems are collapsing."

"Kryten, just a few seconds!"

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely eight minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"I've managed to hack into the cameras." Kochanski said. "Omigod!" she gasped as Kryten abruptly exploded.

"Kochanski, are you still there?" The Doctor asked.

"What did you do? You were supposed to save Kryten!?"

"Just a few seconds..." The Doctor was desperately running while trying to work the sonic screwdriver on the communications device.

"Just a few seconds? What good would that do now Kryten's gone?"

"There's going to be a bit of a kick with this." And suddenly there was a surge of power to the communications device on Kochanski's wrist and she was knocked to the floor.

"Kris?!" Lister yelled.

"Hello?" It was Kryten's voice from the communications device.

"Yes," the Doctor explained. "I managed to download him from his robot form just before it exploded. Now all you need is find a new body and he'll be...much better. I'm sorry, I couldn't download everything in your memory banks. All your knowledge of _The Economist, The Telegraph _and Kingsley Amis books I had to leave behind. And you know only seven Britpop boy band songs from the nineties."

"Well Ma'am, you had to do what you had to do."

"Also he'll serve as a better reminder of the Silence."

"Who are those again?" Lister asked. Kochanski slapped him.

"Now everyone to the TARDIS! Second docking bay!"

"But won't the Silents destroy it?" Kryten wondered.

"Their powers won't work on it."

"Are you sure?" Rimmer wondered.

"Pretty sure," the Doctor replied to him, but not to the others. She crossed her fingers.

"We're a few dozen meters from the docking bay." Kochanski yelled as she opened another door. "Oh no! The room is full of Silents!"


	9. The Final Enemy

But then an odd thing happened. The half dozen Silents didn't use their power to destroy Kochanski, Lister and the communications device Kryten was in. Instead an orange glow engulfed them...and they vanished.

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely seven minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"Doctor? The Silence have gone. They were teleported in the same orange glow that took away my son." Lister said.

"Ma'am, I'm detecting similar signs." Kryten added. "Apparently they're all being transported."

"Why would they leave us a free route to the TARDIS?" Rimmer wondered.

"I'm afraid it's bad news." the Doctor clarified.

"Of course it is."

"Someone has taken hold of the conspiracy to get a time machine, and was strong enough to force the Silence to do that someone's biding. And that person is strong enough to bribe someone else to hurt you..."

"Hey! That's weird!" Lister noted.

"What's weird?" the Doctor replied with an urgency Lister unfortunately did not catch.

"There's some kind of statue of an angel in the...HOLY SMEG!" For in the literal blink of an eye, the "statue" had leaped across the room with it hands just inches from Lister's throat.

"**DO NOT BLINK! DO NOT BLINK!" **the Doctor shouted.

"What the hell is it?" Kochanski asked.

"Listen carefully. You have just encountered a Weeping Angel. And yes, they are aliens. You must not blink. They are expert hunters and assassins. And they have a perfect defense mechanism. When there are seen, they are quantum locked and don't move. But when they are not seen, they can move with wicked speed, very much in the blink of an eye. When they touch people they absorb the temporal energy they would have had, sending them back in time."

"Would that be such a bad idea?" Kochanski asked. "Because I _really _need to be somewhere else seven minutes from now."

"They can also break your neck."

"There's one right there!" Rimmer yelled.

"And there's another one!" Lister yelled. "They're forcing us to make a detour."

"WHY ISN'T THIS WEAPON HURTING THEM!?" Kochanski yelled. All four of them were running as best they could.

"Because they're not really made of stone," the Doctor replied. "They're quantum locked and immune to most weapons."

"What are they vulnerable to?"

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely six minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"Well it's possible the nuclear explosion we're about to have in a few minutes may damage them."

"Something else!"

"Temporal anomalies can hurt them." Another idea came to the Doctor. "They will also not move if they _think _they're being seen."

Kochanski paused slightly before replying. "That is both vague and unhelpful."

"The key thing is not to blink! You'll have to take turns blinking!" A horrible idea came to the Doctor. "Are you looking into their eyes? Rimmer, that goes for you."

"Is that a bad idea?" Lister asked.

"It's a _very _bad idea. Don't look into their eyes."

"You're telling me not to look into their eyes?! How am I supposed to not look at their eyes?" The Doctor winced, and only hoped that not enough time had passed for the Angels' most insidious trick to take place. Then an idea came to her. "Look at their breasts! Look at their breasts! Or better yet, don't look at their breasts! Kochanski, Rimmer that definitely goes for you as well."

The Doctor and Rimmer dashed down another corridor. There were near the labs that three million years ago had been used to study minerals. In fact, this particular lab had been used to study silicon. "There's that angel! And there's another one!" Rimmer yelled.

"The two are converging on us."

"Oh, more than two," a voice spoke up on the Doctor's communicator.

"Captain Hollister?!" Rimmer gasped.

"Captain Hollister is dead." the Doctor explained. "They're using his voice. It's one of their tricks. If you hear Kochanski and Lister taunting you, it means they've killed them."

A nasty idea came to Rimmer. "What if they're unusually kind and generous?"

"You went a very long time without being aware of our existence." "Hollister" gloated. "I suppose you've done more research on us since then. Do you see the signets on the two Angels' ring fingers?" The Doctor grimly nodded. "Why don't you tell Rimmer what it means?"

"Rimmer, they're a War Quartet. The Four deadliest Angels who usually serve as their Queen's bodyguard."

"So you can imagine just how many strings your Enemy had to pull to get us to attack you."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely five minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"So there are two more attacking us?" Rimmer wondered.

"Just one more!" the Doctor yelled, as a third appeared coming through a blind spot. The lights flickered. "Everyone! The Angels can absorb electrical power, including the lights! Rimmer get to that door!" Rimmer quickly opened and the two dashed through. The Doctor locked it and zapped it with her screwdriver. "All right, we may have forty seconds. I've just increased the reflectivity of the glass on the other side. But I need to think of a trap. If only someone had an encyclopedic knowledge of the diesel decks!"

For the first time all day, Rimmer was surprisingly calm. "I may just be able to help you."

* * *

Somewhat implausibly, Lister and Kochanski had reached a vital entrance. "We made it!" Kochanski happily shouted. "Thank God, you're such a sexist pig!" She reached out and kissed him. For a few second their eyes were closed...but it only seemed so as Lister was able to keep one open. An angry Angel was trapped a few feet from them.

"Not today, stone bitch." Lister smirked.

"Sir, you really shouldn't tease the Angels," Kryten said from the communications device.

"Once we get to the TARDIS, he can moon them to his heart's content." Kochanski replied. An alarming situation however occurred. "Why isn't this door opening?"

"Ma'am, the fire from the exploded Starbug in docking bay one must have caused an automatic lockdown of the doors and those of rooms adjacent to it."

"I only need a few seconds to run through it!"

"That may be true. But I can't override it and with Holly gone there's no way to open it in the time that we have. Finding another route..."

A few seconds passed for the route to appear on the communications device. But just as the two planned to run through it... "There's another Weeping Angel blocking the way!" Lister yelled.

"We'll have to take another route!" Kochanski grabbed Lister by the hand, and dashed through several doors before racing up a stairwell. "We are going to be cutting this _very _close."

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely four minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

* * *

Meanwhile Rimmer and the Doctor were about to find out whether they had spent those forty (actually thirty-two) seconds to good use. They were running a floor lower in one of the diesel decks. There were limited lights on, and they flickered alarmingly off and on. But more off. As they raced, they heard "Hollister" yell. "I'm coming! You can't get away! I'm right behind you!"

The two found themselves in a white corridor, but with plenty of valves and machinery nearby. The lights were still flickering alarmingly. "Rimmer, we make our stand here. Take out your weapon."

There was an unpleasant shriek. It was the sound of three of the four War Quartet as they raced to the duo on all sides. But "Hollister" was singing, in a deliberately off key voice. "Do you wanna know a secret?"

"What sort of secret?"

"You're going to die. Perhaps I'll let you regenerate long enough to tell you about one of your other deaths."

The lights faded and dimmed alarmingly. Rimmer was, understandably, very frightened, and didn't notice a small smile form on the Doctor's face. Thanks to her screwdriver, which was still logged into Adam's computer and the TARDIS, she had downloaded a special app into the electric system. The app cunningly mimicked the Angels' effects on the electrical system, while secretly compensating for their effects. Meanwhile another app encouraged a power buildup in a nearby machine. So at just the right exact second, the Doctor yelled "Now" and Rimmer fired into the machine. Various flammable gases were released while the power surged and there was an explosion. At another instant all the lights appeared on at full power, just as the floor below the pair and the Angels started to disintegrate.

The Doctor and Rimmer fell to the floor below them, with Rimmer bearing the brunt of the pain. As he recovered himself he saw a strange sight. The four Angels were hovering in air, just inches from each other. Ordinarily the War Quartet would hide their eyes behind their hands. But the shock of the disintegrating floor altered their line of sights enough just for them to see each other. Meanwhile, "Hollister," head of the Quartet, had lowered "his" hands just enough so that "he" could snap the Doctor's neck the next instant. Realizing the trick, "Hollister" shrieked. "No..." Rimmer was startled at the sight, but the Doctor yanked him along in the darkened corridor. The Angels would be very angry. And even faster.

* * *

"I don't understand." Lister yelled, as the two Angels pursued them. "Why are we running away from the docking bay?"

"We need to get to the special solarium on the top of the ship!" Kochanski yelled, as she reached the door. She quickly started pressing the code while Lister stood watch. "It has two special features that can help us."

She opened the door and the two hastened through it. They found themselves in a dark antechamber, where through thick glass they could see the cold infinite of space beyond them. "Shut the door Dave!"

Dave did so. "But the Angels can get through locked doors!" He used the light of the communications device and desperately tried to not blink to keep the Angels at bay.

"Kryten find some way to turn on the lights. You see this room is designed to absorb and store stellar energy. It's specially designed to deal with solar flares! And the first thing that'll help us..." And then the lights turned on, "...is that the photo-voltaic cells are reflective." And then the two found themselves in a room with mirrors. Lister imagined he heard the Angels hiss at the door.

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely three minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

"You don't need to worry about blinking Dave. With all the mirrors here, the Angels will assume they're being watched." Kochanski quickly turned on a computer console and started furiously typing. Lister relaxed for an instant, When he looked at the Angels again he could see the rage behind their hands.

"That would be great if the ship wasn't about to blow up. But how do we get out of here?"

"Simple! Because this section is vulnerable to solar flares, there are special tubes that allow people here to immediately evacuate and go straight to the medicentre. The tubes are very quick, are lighted, and have the same reflective surface, so it will delay the Angels as we go down it."

"But we don't want to go to the medicentre! We want to go to the Second Docking Bay!"

"Yes, but the tubes can be diverted to the docking bay. And I've done it! Now all I have to do is open this hatch and we'll be at the TARDIS in less than a minute." Kochanski stepped to the floor where the hatch was. "Why isn't it opening?"

Lister looked at the Angels outside and saw that under their covered eyes, they had a most evil grin. And then he realized something. Although the Angels were unimaginably ancient, little was known about them. It wasn't even clear whether they were individually intelligent. Nothing was known of their culture or philosophy. Did they know anything of science and technology? And it was then that Lister realized that individually the Angels were _extremely _intelligent and cunning. And notwithstanding their limited need for science and technology, they were quite capable of mastering it. For example, they were capable of locking the door and the hatch. And they were capable of something else as well. Lister gasped into the communications device. "Doctor...the Angels...they're sucking out all the air..." as he and Kochanski fell unconscious to the floor.

* * *

The Doctor and Rimmer had finally reached the Second Docking Bay. "Quickly!" she yelled. "We still have time to save the others." She was just about to reach the TARDIS door, with Rimmer right behind her, when an Angel appeared. Then another one, and then another one. The docking bay quickly filled with Angels. The Doctor had her back to the TARDIS door, with Rimmer in front of her. In front of both of them were the main stairs and on the level above them was the War Quartet.

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely two minutes. This alert will repeat every minute."

The Doctor and Rimmer heard someone walking towards them. It was Cassandra, who joined the Quartet. There was a strange shimmering green hue to her figure, with a noise like a theremin. She tossed some black gauze like substances near the Doctor.

"Veils, Doctor, veils." She moved down a couple of steps. "I told you I had an express ticket off this ship. Now if you could give me the key to the TARDIS."

The Doctor pointed her sonic screwdriver at Cassandra. "Don't move another step."

"Why not? Your screwdriver won't work with this new update, courtesy of the Cybermen actually."

"If you move another step, I will use my screwdriver to launch a sonic pulse that will kill Rimmer."

There was a silence for a few seconds, marked only by Rimmer becoming even more fearful and startled. Then Cassandra laughed. "Oh Doctor, I knew you tried to bluff your way out of difficult situations. But I never thought you would do so pathetically. The humans we have been manipulating killed a thousand people without a thought. You know how evil the Weeping Angels are, let alone their superior. And you are trying to appeal to their non-existent moral conscience with the life of someone his fellow crew members dreamed of strangling every week for the last 1600 weeks?"

The Doctor kept her calm. "Not really. Cassandra, you're the one who's bluffing. Now listen very carefully, Rimmer. The next two minutes are very dangerous. Whatever I do or say, you must not blink or turn your head until we are both safely in the TARDIS. Do you understand?"

"I'm in a room filled with women who all want to kill me. I'll do whatever you say."

"Good lad. Now Cassandra, when I encountered this conspiracy, I thought, how would people who could only move forward into the future in time with stasis chambers find people who would be good potential time travelers? They would look for temporal anomalies, say by using the sophisticated late 22nd computers of the Jupiter Mining Corporation. And they found that Rimmer, even though he was only four years older than Lister, was his father. Rimmer, please don't turn around. And the problem for you _is that he hasn't conceived Lister yet._"

Rimmer struggled to take in this information. "I don't understand. Why would I abandon my only child?"

Cassandra was civil and polite, but her contempt was ever present. "You seem to be under the delusion that we were going to give you a choice." She turned her attention to the Doctor. "You wouldn't kill an innocent man."

"You think so? I've already lost two companions, and this would get them back. But I see no need to debate this. You've done a very good job running things today. But the presence of the Angels and the War Quartet here mean they're in control now. And the temporal anomaly caused by Rimmer's death would be _extremely_ painful to them. So they're not going to let you risk it, are they?"

Cassandra looked bitterly at the War Quartet, and in particular "Hollister." "Name your terms."

"Now, the Angels take the potential energy of people, flinging them into the past. They can do the same with corpses?"

"There's clearly not as much energy, but the basic principle is the same."

"And I know you have some Angels in reserve, looking for blind spots."

"Of course."

"Now those Angels are going to go the main operations room, where Yasmin's body is, and the first docking bay, where Adam's body is, and return them to their time. They're also going to go to the solarium and transport Lister and Kochanski out of danger." The Doctor quickly typed in some information on her communications device and the sonic screwdriver. "I've sent a message to the communications device. They'll send a beep once they've moved them. I've sent a special message to Kryten to only send it if all three are on some inhabitable planet, and not trapped in deep space."

There was a silence, as the Doctor retrieved the TARDIS key, and slowly walked backwards towards the door. There was a beep, meaning Yasmin's body was moved. Then another beep for Adam's.

"Alert! Alert! The warp engines have been compromised. Plasma systems will collapse, causing nuclear detonation in precisely one minute. This alert will repeat every minute."

There was another tense few seconds, as Cassandra and the Doctor wondered how to outwit the other while the Doctor slowly unlocked the TARDIS' door. Finally, there was a third beep.

"Congratulations Doctor. You _may _have saved the others. And now for Rimmer?"

"One more question-Rimmer, slowly start walking backwards-" and Rimmer started doing so. "Turning Rimmer back into human form. It's similar to how the Angels change, correct?"

"Of course. The matter is a simple one for them."

"Well," and now the Doctor had opened the door of the TARDIS, "you know what? I think the longer we prevent that from happening the better it will be for everyone. Don't you agree?"

"Very much so, Doctor. NOW!" And the docking bay was then filled with blinding light. Rimmer and the Doctor had no choice but to respond as centuries of instinct told them to-they blinked. In an instant both vanished, and Cassandra and the War Quartet were in the TARDIS.

"At last! The TARDIS is ours!" But even while she was gloating, Cassandra quickly set the coordinates. When the last of the fourteen Angels was inside, she activated the dematerialization circuit and the TARDIS vanished.

For exactly twelve seconds Red Dwarf appeared untroubled in space as it had for millions of years. And then it exploded in a silent nuclear fireball. A sentient toaster was annihilated before it could scream. Most everything was atomized. There were only a few exceptions. There was Kryten's favorite mop and Lister's guitar (minus its neck). There was a purple ascot that should not have worked for the Cat, but always did. There was, literally, the last CD of English morris dancing in the entire universe. And there was a photograph of Kochanski and Lister with their newborn baby, long forgotten because of the conspiracy's mental manipulations.

When Rimmer reappeared he did something he had not done in decades-he sneezed. He tried to take in his bearings. He was in a London park on a cloudy October day. Looking around he gathered that he was somewhen in the middle of the 22nd century. He was still trying to grasp the fact that he was human when an attractive black woman approached him.

"Hi! My name is Bathsheeba Smith. My family has known the Doctor for generations. I'm here to help you."

Had the day not been as stressful and traumatic as it was, Rimmer might have realized the Doctor must have recovered from being sent in the past by the Angels and had found some way to help him. But when he looked at Martha Jones' great-great-granddaughter he found himself looking at Lister's eyes, and his cheeks. He collapsed to the ground in tears.


End file.
